Deeam Life 



By DON? G. MITCHELL 



DREAM LIFE: 



FABLE OF THE SEASONS 



BY THE AUTHOR OP 

REVERIES OF A BACHELOR.' 



We are such stuff 

As dreams are made of; and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep. 

^,. TEMPEST. 

:' /I 



New York 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1884 






COPYEIOHT, /85/, ^863, f883 

Br Donald G. Mitchell 



Trow's 

Printing and Bookbinding Company 

aoi-213 East Twelfth Street 

NEW YORK 



A NEW PREFACE. 



DREAM-LIFE grew out of the "Reveries" even 
as one bubble piles upon another from the pipe 
out of which young breath blows them into bigness : 
and it was largely because the first floated so well and 
so widely, that life and consequence were given to 
this companion book. 

I am half ashamed, at this late day, to give so poor 
excuse for the writing of " Dream-Life : " any and 
every book should have a better reason for being 
wrought, than its good chance of catching a popular 
tide, and floating upon it to success. There is always 
danger of strain in work so undertaken and of weak 
duplication, and vague echoes of foregone things. 

I well remember that at a Yale College gathering, 
which followed closely upon the publication of the 
** Reveries," a classmate of mine (now 1 think holding 



vi A NEW PREFACE, 

high judicial position) took me aside and warned me, 
with a very grave and solemn countenance, against 
being made a puppet of the publishers : he had seen, 
with good-natured distress, that I was to follow up the 
first success with another book in the same vein, and at 
short order : he feared the result ; it was driving things 
too hard. 

I listened gratefully, but — it must be said — with 
dulled ears. Young sentiment was then so jubilant in 
me that it seemed to me I could have reeled it off by 
scores ; nor indeed did spontaneity prove lacking. 

It was to a quaint old farmhouse shadowed by elms, 
in a very quiet Country (whose main features peep out 
from the opening chapters of Spring, Summer and 
Autumn in this volume), that I went to finish my sum- 
mer task — the book being promised for early winter. 
There v/as scant, but bracing farmer's fare for me ; and 
a world of encouragement in the play of sun and shadow 
over the tranquil valley landscape, and in the murmur 
of the brooks that I had known of old. 

In six weeks I had completed my task, and going to 
the publishers (then established in the old Brick Church 
Chapel — where now stands the Times building in New 
York), I threw my bundle of MS. upon the counter, 
saying, ** What will you give me for the lot ? " 



A NEW PREFACE, vii 

Mr. Scribner took up the budget smilingly, and said : 
" I wouldn't advise you to part with the copyright ; but 
if you must have an offer I will give you four thousand 
dollars." 

There was cheer in this : yet I wisely took his advice 
— which the result amply justified. Its sale the first 
year went beyond that of the *' Reveries" ; but after- 
ward kept an even range at about one-third less than 
that of its forerunner. And this proportion has held 
with curious persistence ; no accident of sales having 
again carried its score up to that of the first book — 
or brought it more than a third below. 

Like the "Reveries" it came to several foreign re- 
prints — most of these preceded by courteous com- 
munication with the author ; a signal exception, how- 
ever, was in the case of an Edinburgh house of strong 
theologic proclivities (now having a branch in New 
York), which after pirating the book, prepared it for 
orthodox readers by dropping out the chapter on Boy- 
Religion. I could have wished that the book had been 
altogether so good as to have justified them in making 
their theft complete — or altogether so bad as to have 
kept them honestly aloof. 

On American ground the little book has fallen — 
without doing great harm — into a good many well- 



viii A NEW PREFACE. 

meaning families : and I have heard of it even, as 
insinuating its way on occasions, into some Sunday- 
school libraries — where I hope it may work no blight. 
Surely there are six days in the week, on which I 
should think, its perusal could do no mischief ; and so, 
commending it to all young people of tender suscepti- 
bilities, and to all old people of charitable intent, I give 
this new prefatory send-off to the Fable of Dream 
Life. 

D. G. M. 
EDGEWOOD, Sept., 1883. 



PREFACE OF 1863. 



TWELVE years ago, this autumn, when I had fin- 
ished the concluding chapters of this little book, 
I wrote a letter of Dedication to Washington Irving, 
and forwarding it by mail to Sunnyside, begged his 
permission to print it. I think I shall gratify a rational 
curiosity of my readers (however much they may con- 
demn my vanity) if I give his reply in full. 

" My dear Sir,— 

*' Though I have a great disinclination in general to 
be the object of literary oblations and compliments, yet 
in the present instance I have enjoyed your writings 
with such peculiar relish, and been so drawn toward the 
author by the qualities of head and heart evinced in 
them, that I confess I feel gratified by a dedication, 
over-flattering as I may deem it, which may serve as an 
outward sign that we are cordially linked together in 
sympathies and friendship. 



X PREFACE OF 1863. 

" I would only suggest that in your dedication you 
would omit the LL.D., a learned dignity urged upon me 
very much ' against the stomach of my sense,' and to 
which I have never laid claim. 

*' Ever, my dear sir, 

" Yours, very truly, 

" Washington Irving. 

" SUNNYSIDE, Nov. 1851." 

I had been personally presented to Mr. Irving for the 
first time, only a year before, under the introduction of 
my good friend, Mr. Clark (the veteran Editor of the 
old Knickerbocker in its palmy days). Thereafter I 
had met him from time to time, and had paid a charm- 
ing visit to his delightful home of Sunnyside. 

But it was after the date of the publication of this 
book and during the summer of 1852, that I saw Mr. 
Irving more familiarly, and came to appreciate more 
fully that charming bonhomie and geniality in his char- 
acter which we all recognize so constantly in his writ- 
ings. And if I set down here a few recollections of 
that pleasant intercourse, they will, I am sure, more 
than make good the place of the old letter of Dedica- 
tion, and will serve to keep alive the association I wish 
to cherish between my little book and the name of 
the distinguished author who so kindly showed me his 
favor. 



PREFACE OF 1863. xi 

For the first time, after many years, Mr. Irving made 
a stay of a few weeks at Saratoga, in the summer of 
1852. By good fortune, I chanced to occupy a room 
upon the same corridor of the hotel, within a few doors 
of his, and shared very many of his early morning walks 
to the " Spring." What at once struck me very forci- 
bly in the course of these walks, was the rare alertness 
and minuteness of his observation. No rheumatic old 
hero-invalid, battered in long wars with the doctors, — 
no droll marplot of a boy, could appear within range, 
but I could see in the changeful expression of my com- 
panion the admeasurement and quiet adjustment of the 
appeal which either made upon his sympathy or his 
humor. A flower, a tree, a burst of music, a country 
market-man hoisted upon his wagon-load of cabbages, 
— all these by turns caught and engaged his attention, 
however little they might interrupt the flow of his 
talk. 

I ventured to ask on one occasion, if he had de- 
pended solely upon his memory for the thousand little 
descriptions of natural objects which occur in his 
books. 

** Not wholly," he replied ; and went on to tell me it 
had been his way, in the earlier days of his authorship, 
to carry little tablets with him into the country, and 



xii PREFACE OF 1863. 

whenever he saw a scene specially picturesque, — a 
cottage of marked features, a noticeable tree, any 
picture, in short, which promised service to him, — to 
note down its distinguishing points, and hold it in re- 
serve. 

** This," said he, " is one among those small arts and 
industries which a person who writes much must avail 
himself of: they are equivalent to the little thumb- 
sketches from which a painter makes up his larger 
compositions." 

On our way to the church on a certain Sunday morn- 
ing, he tapped my shoulder as we entered the little 
gate, and called my attention to a lithe young Indian 
girl, who had strolled down from the campment on the 
plains, and was standing proudly erect upon the church- 
porch, with finger to her lips, scanning curiously the 
worshippers as they passed in. 

" What a splendid figure of a woman ! " said he. 
" She is puzzling over the extravagances and devotions 
of the white-faces." 

The black, straight elf-locks, the swart face, the great 
wondering eye, with the gay blanket, short gown of 
wooUen-stufF, and brilliant moccasins, made a striking 
picture to be sure ; and I could not help thinking, that 
if the apparition had chanced upon him earlier, she 



PREFACE OF 1863. xiii 

might have figured in some story of Pokanoket or of the 
Prairies. 

I took occasion one morning to ask if he was always 
able to control the ** humors of writing," and to put 
himself resolutely to work, whatever might be the state 
of his feeling. 

*' No," he said, very decidedly, — ** unfortunately I 
cannot : there are men who do, I believe. I always 
envied them ; but there was a period of a month or 
more, after I had finally decided upon literary labors, 
and had declined a lucrative position under Govern- 
ment, when it seemed as if I was utterly bereft of all 
the fancies I ever had ; for weeks I could do nothing ; 
but at last the clouds lifted, and I wrote off the first 
numbers of the ' Sketch-Book,' and dispatched them to 
my good friends in this country, to make the most of. 
I feared it would not be much. 

"And the worst of it is," continued he, ** the good 
people do not allow for these periods of depression ; if 
a man does a thing tolerably well in his happy moods, 
they see no reason why he should not be always in a 
happy mood." 

I asked if he had never found relief, and a stimulant 
to work, in the reading aloud of some favorite old 
author. 



xiv PREFACE OF 1863. 

" Often," said he ; " and none are more effective 
with me for this service than the sacred writers ; I 
think I have waked a good many sleeping fancies by 
the reading of a chapter in Isaiah." 

In answer to inquiries of mine in regard to the in- 
complete state of several of the stories of " Wolfert's 
Roost," he said : " Yes, we do not get through all we 
lay out. Some of those sketches had lain in my mind 
for a great many years ; they made a sort of garret- 
trumpery, of which I thought I would make a general 
clearance, leaving the odds and ends to take care of 
themselves. 

" There was a novel too, I once laid out, in which an 
English lad, being a son of one of the old Regicide 
Judges, was to come over to New England in search of 
his father : he was to meet with a throng of adventures, 
and to arrive at length upon a Saturday night, in the 
midst of a terrible thunder-storm, at the house of a 
stern old Massachusetts Puritan, who comes out to 
answer to the rappings ; and by a flash of lightning 
which gleams upon the harsh, iron visage of the old 
man, the son fancies he recognizes his father." 

And as he told it, the old gentleman wrinkled his 
brow, and tried to put on the fierce look he would 
describe. 



PREFACE OF 1863. xv 

" It's all there is of it," said he. " If you want to 
make a story, you can furbish it up." 

There were among other notable people at Saratoga, 
during the summer of which I speak, the well-known 

Mrs. Dr. R , of Philadelphia, since deceased, — a 

woman of great eccentricities, but of a wonderfully 
masculine mind, and of great cultivation. It was a 
fancy of hers to give special, social patronage to for- 
eign artists ; and among those just then at Saratoga, 
and the recipients of her favor, were a distinguished 
violinist — whose name I do not now recall — and the 
newly married Mme. Alboni. Mr. Irving, in common 
with her other acquaintances, she was inclined to make 
contributory to her attentions. To this Mr. Irving was 
not averse, both from his extreme love of music, and 
his kindliness toward the artists themselves ; yet, in 
his own quiet way, I think he fretted considerably at 
being pounced upon at odd hours to give them French 
talk. 

''It's very awkward," said he to me one day; *' I 
have had large occasion for practice to be sure ; but I 
rather fancy, after all, our own language ; it's heartier 
and easier." 

He was utterly incapable of being lionized. Time 
and again, under the trees in the court of the hotel, did 



xvi PREFACE OF 1863. 

I hear him enter upon some pleasant story, lighted np 
with that rare turn of his eye, and by his deft expres- 
sions, when, as chance acquaintances grouped about 
him, — as is the way of watering-places, — and eager 
listeners multiplied, his hilarity and spirit took a chill 
from tlie increasing auditory, and drawing abruptly to 
a close, he would sidle away with a friend and be 
gone. 

Among the visitors was a tall, interesting young girl 
— from Louisiana, if I mistake not — who had the repu- 
tation of being a great heiress, and who was, of course, 
beset by a host of admirers. There was something 
very attractive in her air, and Mr. Irving was never 
tired of gazing on her as she walked, with what he 
called a " faun-like step," across the lawn, or up and 
down the corridors. Her eyes too — ''dove-like," he 
termed them — were his special admiration. He 
watched with an amused interest the varying fortunes 
of the rival lovers, and often met me with — "Well, 
who is in favor to-day ? " And he discussed very freely 
the varying chances. 

One brusque, heavy man, who thought to carry the 
matter through by a coup de 7nai?t, he was sure could 
never succeed. A second, who was most assiduous, 
but whose brazen confidence was unyielding, he 



PREFACE OF 1863. xvii 

counted still less u|ion. But a quiet, somewhat older 
gentleman, whose look was ever full of tender appeal, 
and who bore himself with a modest dignity, he reck- 
oned the probable winner. " He will feel a Nay griev- 
ously," said he ; *' but for the others, they will forget it 
in a supper." 

I believe it eventually proved that no one of those 
present was the successful suitor. I know only that 
the fair girl was afterward a bride ; and (what we all so 
little anticipated) her home is now a scene of desola- 
tion, her fortune very likely a wreck, her family scat- 
tered or slain, and herself, maybe, a fugitive. 

I saw Mr. Irving afterward repeatedly in New York, 
and passed two delightful days at Sunnyside. I can 
never forget a drive with him upon a crisp autumn 
morning through Sleepy Hollow, and all the notable 
localities of his neighborhood, in the course of which 
he kindly called my attention, in the most unaffected 
and incidental way, to those which had been specially 
illustrated by his pen ; and with a rare humor re- 
counted to me some of his boyish adventures among 
the old Dutch farmers of this region. Most of all, it 
is impossible for me to forget the rare kindliness of 
his manner, his friendly suggestions, and the beaming 
expression of his eye. 



xviii PREFACE OF 1863. 

I met it last at the little stile from which I strolled 
away to the station at Dearman ; and when I saw the 
kind face again, it was in the coffin, at the little church 
where he attended service. But the eyes were closed, 
and the wonderful radiance of expression gone. It 
seemed to me that death never took away more from 
a living face ; it was but a cold shadow lying there, of 
the man who had taught a nation to love him. 

D. G. M. 

EDGEWOOD, Sept. 1863. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

PACK 

I. With my Aunt Tabithy, ..... i 
II. With my Reader, lo 



DREAMS OF BOYHOOD. 

Spring, 23 

1. Rain in the Garret, 28 

11. School-Dreams, 36 

III. Boy Sentiment, 47 

IV. A Friend Made and Friend Lost, . • • 53 
V. Boy Religion, 65 

VI. A New-England Squire, 73 

VII. The Country Church, 85 

VIII. A Home Scene, .94 

DREAMS OF YOUTH. 

Summer, 105 

L Cloister Life, 112 

II. First Ambition, 124 



XX CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

III. College Romance, 130 

IV. First Look at the World, .... 143 
V. A Broken Home, 154 

VI. Family Confidence, 164 

VII. A Good Wife, 172 

VIII. A Broken Hope, . . . . . .180 

DREAMS OF MANHOOD. 

Autumn, 193 

I. Pride of Manliness, 199 

11. Man of the World, 206 

III. Manly Hope, 214 

IV. Manly Love, 224 

V. Cheer and Children, 230 

VI. A Dream of Darkness, 239 

VIL Peace, 247 

DREAMS OF AGE. 

Winter 257 

I. What is Gone, 261 

II. What is Left, 267 

IIL Grief and Joy of Age, 273 

IV. The End of Dreams, 279 




INTR OD UGTOR Y, 



With my Aunt Tabithy. 

PSHAW I " said my Aunt Tabithy, "have you not 
done with dreaming ? " 

My Aunt Tabithy, though an excellent and most 
notable person, loves occasionally a quiet bit of 
satire. And when I told her that I was shai-pening 
my pen for a new story of those dreamy fancies and 
half-experiences which he grouped along the jour- 
neying hours of my sohtary hfe, she smiled as if in 
derision. 

"Ah, Isaac," said she, "all that is exhausted; 

you have rung so many changes on your hopes and 



2 DREAM-LIFE. 

your dreams, that you have nothing left but to make 
them real — if you can." . 

It is very idle to get angry with a good-natured 
old lady. I did better than this, — I made her 
Hsten to me. 

Exhausted, do you say, Aunt Tabithy? Is 

life then exhausted ; is hope gone out ; is fancy 
dead? 

No, no. Hope and the world are fuU ; and he 
who scores upon the pages of a book a phase or two 
of the great Hfe of passion, of endurance, of love, of 
sorrow, is but wetting a feather in the sea that 
breaks ceaselessly along the great shore of the years. 
Every man's heart is a living drama ; every death is 
a drop-scene ; every book that records sentiment or 
passion is only a faint foot-Hght to throw a little 
flicker on the stage. 

There is no need of wandering widely to catch in- 
cident or adventure ; they are everysvhere about us ; 
each day is a succession of escapes and joys, — not 
perhaps clear to the world, but brooding in our 
thought, and Hving in our brain. From the very 
first. Angels and Devils are busy with us, and we 
are struggling against them and for them. 

No, no, Aunt Tabithy ; this Hfe of musing does 
not exhaust so easily. It is like the springs on the 
farm-land, that are fed with all the showers and the 



INTRODUCTORY. 3 

dews of the year, and that from the narrow fissures 
of the rock send up streams continually ; or it is 
hke the deep well in the meadow, where one may 
see stars at noon when no stars are shining. 

What is Keverie, and what are these Day-dreams, 
but fleecy cloud-drifts that float eternally, and eter- 
nally change shapes, upon the great over-arching 
sky of thought ? You may seize the strong outHnes 
that the passion-breezes of to-day shall throw into 
their figures ; but to-morrow may breed a whirlwind 
that wdll chase swift, gigantic shadows over the 
heaven of your thought, and change the whole land- 
scape of your life. 

Dream-land will never be exhausted, until we 
enter the land of dreams, and until, in "shuffling off 
this mortal coil," thought will become fact, and all 
facts will be only thought 

As it is, I can conceive no mood of mind more in 
keeping with what is to follow upon the grave, than 
those fancies which warp our frail hulks toward the 
ocean of the Infinite, and that so sublimate the real- 
ities of this being, that they seem to belong to that 
shadowy realm whither every day's journey is 
leading. 

— It was warm weather, and my aunt was dozing. 
" What is this all to be about ? " said she, recovering 
her knitting-needle. 



/ 



4 DREAM-LIFE. 

"About love, and toil, and duty, and sorrow," 
said L 

My aunt laid down her knitting, looked at me 
over the rim of her spectacles, and — took snuff. 

I said nothing. 

*' How many times have you been in love, Isaac ?" 
said she. 

It was now my turn to say, "Pshaw ! " 

Judging from her look of assurance, I could not 
possibly have made a more satisfactory reply. 

My aunt finished the needle she was upon, 
smoothed the stocking-leg over her knee, and look- 
ing at me with a very comical expression, said, 
" Isaac, you are a sad fellow ! " 

I did not like the tone of this ; it sounded very 
much as if it would have been in the mouth of any 
one else — " bad fellow." 

And she went on to ask me, in a very bantering 
way, if my stock of youthful loves was not nearly 
exhausted ; and she cited the episode of the fair- 
haired Enrica, as perhaps the most tempting that I 
could draw from my experience. 

A better man than myself, if he had only a fair 
share of vanity, would have been nettled at this ; 
and I replied somewhat tartly, that I had never pro- 
fessed to write my experiences. These might be 
more or less tempting ; but certainly if they were of 



INTRODUCTORY. 5 

a kind which I have attempted to portray in the 
characters of Bella, or of Carrj', neither my Aunt 
Tabithy nor any one else should have learned such 
truth from any book of mine. There are griefs too 
sacred to be babbled to the world ; and there may 
be loves which one would forbear to whisper even 
to a friend. 

No, no ; imagination has been playing pranks 
with memory ; and if I have made the feeling real, 
I am content that the facts should be false. Feel- 
ing, indeed, has a higher truth in it than circum- 
stance. It appeals to a larger jury for acquittal ; it 
is approved or condemned by a better judge. And 
if I can catch this bolder and richer truth of feeling, 
I will not mind if the types of it are all fabrications. 

If I run over some sweet experience of love, 
(my Aunt Tabithy brightened a Httle,) must I make 
good the fact that the loved one lives, and expose 
her name and qualities to make your sympathy 
sound? Or shall I not rather be working upon 
higher and holier ground, if I take the passion for 
itself, and so weave it into words, that you and every 
willing sufferer may recognize the fervor, and forget 
the personaHty ? 

Life, after all, is but a bundle of hints, each sug- 
gesting actual and positive development, but rarely 
reaching it. And as I recall these hints, and in 

} 



6 DREAM-LIFE, 

fancy trace them to their issues, I am as truly dsal- 
ing -with life as if my life had dealt them all to me. 

This is what I would be doing in the present 
book. I would catch up here and there the shreds 
of feeling which the brambles and roughnesses of 
the world have left tanghng on my heart, and weave 
them into those soft and perfect tissues, which, if 
the world had been only a httle less rough, might 
now perhaps enclose my heart altogether. 

"Ah," said my Aunt Tabithy, as she smoothed the 
stocking-leg again, with a sigh, "there is, after aU, 
but one youth-time ; and if you put down its memo- 
ries once, you can find no second growth." 

My Aunt Tabithy was wrong. There is as much 
growth in the thoughts and feelings that run behind 
us as in those that run before us. You may make a 
rich, full picture of your childhood to-day ; but let 
the hour go by, and the darkness stoop to your pil- 
low with its million shapes of the past, and my 
word for it, you shall have some flash of childhood 
Hghten upon you, that was unknown to your busiest 
thought of the morning. 

Let a week go by, and in some interval of care, as 
you recall the smile of a mother, or some pale sister 
who is dead, a new crowd of memories will rush 
upon your soul, and leave such traces in your 
thought as wiU make you kinder and better for 



INTR OD UCTOR Y. 7 

days and weeks. Or, you shall assist at some neigh- 
bor funeral, where the little dead one (like one you 
have seen before) shall hold in its tiny gras]3 (as you 
have taught Httle dead hands to do) fresh flowers, 
laughing flowers, l}"ing hghtly on the white robe of 
the dear child, 

I had touched my Aunt Tabithy : she had dropped 
a stitch in her knitting. I believe she was weeping. 

— Aye, this brain of ours is a master-worker, 
whose appHances we do not one half know ; and 
this heart of ours is a rare storehouse, furnishing 
the brain with new material every hour of om- lives ; 
and their hmits we shall not know, until they shall 
end — together. 

Nor is there, as many faint-hearts imagine, but 
one phase of earnestness in our life of feeling. One 
train of deep emotion cannot fill up the heart : it 
radiates like a star, God-ward and earth-ward. It 
spends and reflects all ways. Its force is to bo 
reckoned not so much by token as by capacity. 
Facts are the poorest and most slumberous evi- 
dences of passion or of affection. True feeling is 
ranging everyw^here ; whereas your actual attach- 
ments are too apt to be tied to sense. 

A single affection may indeed be true, earnest, 
and absorbing ; but such an one, after all, is but a 
type — and if the object be worthy, a glorious type 



8 DREAM-LIFE, 

— of the great book of feeling : it is only the vapor 
from the caldron of the heart, and bears no deeper 
relation to its exhaustless sources than the letter, 
which my pen makes, bears to the thought that in- 
spires it, — or than a single morning strain of your 
orioles and thrushes bears to that wide bird-chorus 
which is making every sunrise a worship, and every 
grove a temple. 

My Aunt Tabithy nodded. 

Nor is this a mere Bachelor fling against con- 
stancy. I can believe. Heaven knows, in an unalter- 
able and unflinching affection, which neither desires 
nor admits the prospect of any other. But when 
one is tasking his brain to talk for his heart, — when 
he is not WL-itrng positive history, but only making 
mention, as it were, of the heart's capacities, — who 
shall say that he has reached the fulness, that he 
has exhausted the stock of its feeling, or that he has 
touched its highest notes ? It is true, there is but 
one heart in a man to be stirred ; but every stir 
creates a new combination of feehng, that like the 
turn of a kaleidoscope will show some fresh color or 
form. 

A Bachelor, to be sure, has a marvellous advantage 
in this ; and with the tenderest susceptibHities once 
anchored in the bay of marriage, there is little dis- 
position to scud off under each pleasant breeze of 



INTRODUCTORY, 9 

feeling. Nay, I can even imagine — perhaps some- 
what captiously — that after marriage, feeling would 
become a habit ; a rich and holy habit certainly, but 
yet a habit, which weakens the omnivorous grasp of 
the affections, and schools one to a unity of emotion 
that doubts and ignores the promptness and variety 
of impulse which we Bachelors enjoy. 

My aunt nodded again. 

Could it be that she approved what I had been 
saying ? I hardly knew. 

Poor old lady, — she did not know herself. She 
was asleep. 



n. 

With my Reader. 

TTAYING silenced my Aunt Tabithy, I shall be 
-*"*- generous enough, in my triumph, to offer an 
explanatory chat to my reader. 

This is a history of Dreams ; and there will bo 
those who will sneer at such a history, as the work 
of a dreamer. So indeed it is ; and you, my cour- 
teous reader, are a dreamer too. 

You would perhaps like to find your speculations 
about wealth, maniage, or influence called by some 
better name than Dreams. You would Hke to see 
the history of them — if written at all — baptized at 
the font of your own vanity, with some such title as 
— life's purposes, or life's promise. If there had 
been a philosophic naming to my obsei'vations, you 
might have reckoned them good ; as it is, you count 
them all bald and palpable fiction. 



WITH MY READER, ii 

But is it so ? I care not how matter-of-fact j^ou 
may be, you have in your own Hfe at some time 
proved the very tiiith of what I have set down ; and 
the chances are, that even now, gray as you may be, 
and economic as you may be, and devotional as you 
pretend to be, you light up your Sabbath reflections 
with just such dreams of wealth, of per centages, or 
of family, as you will find scattered over these pages. 

I am not to be put aside with any talk about 
stocks, and duties, and respectabihty : aU these, 
though very eminent matters, are but so many types 
in the volume of your thought ; and your eager 
resolves about them are but so many ambitious 
waves breaking up from that great sea of dreamy 
speculation that has spread over your soul from its 
first start into the realm of Consciousness. 

No man's brain is so dull, and no man's eye so 
blind, that they cannot catch food for dreams. 
Each little episode of life is fuU, had we but the 
perception of its fulness. There is no such thing 
as blank in the world of thought. Every action and 
emotion have their development growing and gain- 
ing on the souL Every affection has its tears and 
smiles. Nay, the very material world is full of 
meaning, and by suggesting thought is making us 
what we are and what we wiU be. 

The spaiTOw that is twittering on the edge of my 



12 DREAM-LIFE, 

balcony is calling up to me this moment a world of 
memories that reach over half my Hfetime, and a 
world of hope that stretches farther than any flight 
of sparrows. The rose-tree which shades his mot- 
tled coat is full of buds and blossoms ; and each bud 
and blossom is a token of promise that has issues 
covering life, and reaching beyond death. The 
quiet sunshine beyond the flower and beyond the 
spaiTOW, — gHstening upon the leaves, and playing 
in dehcious waves of warmth over the reeking earth, 
— is lighting both heart and hope, and quickening 
into activity a thousand thoughts of what has been 
and of what will be. The meadow stretching away 
under its golden flood, — waving with grain, and 
with the feathery blossoms of the gi'ass, and golden 
buttercups, and white, nodding daisies, — comes to 
my eye Hke the lapse of fading childhood, studded 
here and there with the bright blossoms of joy, 
crimsoned all over with the flush of health, and en- 
amelled with memories that perfume the soul. The 
blue hills beyond, with deep-blue shadows gathered 
in theu' bosom, lie before me like moimtains of 
years, over which I shall climb through shadows to 
the slope of Age, and go down to the deeper shad- 
ows of Death. 

Nor are dreams without their variety, whatever 
your character may be. I care not how much in 



WITH MY READER. 13 

the pride of your practical judgment, or in your 
leai*ned fancies, you may sneer at any dream of love, 
and reckon it all a poet's fiction : there are times 
when such di-eams come over you like a summer- 
haze, and almost stifle you with their warmth. 

Seek as you will for increase of lands or moneys, 
and there are moments when a spark of some giant 
mind w^iU flash over your cravings, and wake your 
soul suddenly to a quick and yearning sense of that 
influence which is begotten of intellect ; and you 
task your dreams — as I have copied them here — to 
build before you the pleasures of such a renown. 

I care not how worldly you may be : there are 
times when all distinctions seem like dust, and when 
at the graves of the great you dream of a coming 
country, where your proudest hopes shall be 
dimmed forever. 

Married or immarried, young or old, poet or 
worker, you are stiU a dreamer, and wiU one time 
know, and feel, that your life is but a Dream. Yet 
you caU this fiction : you stave off the thoughts in 
print which come over you in Eeverie. You will 
not admit to the eye what is true to the heart. 
Poor weakling, and worldhng, you are not strong 
enough to face yourseK ! 

You will read perhaps with smiles ; you will pos- 
sibly praise the ingenuity ; you will talk with a Hp 



14 DREAM-LIFE, 

schooled against the sHghtest quiver of some bit of 
pathos, and say that it is — well done. Yet why is 
it well done ? — only because it is stolen from your 
very Hfe and heart. It is good, because it is so 
common ; ingenious, because it is so honest ; weU- 
conceived, because it is not conceived at aU. 

There are thousands of mole-eyed people who 
count all passion in print a lie, — people who will go 
into a rage at trifles, and weep in the dark, and love 
in secret, and hope without mention, and cover it all 
under the cloak of what they call — propriety. I 
can see before me now some gray-haired old gentle- 
man, very money-getting, very correct, very cleanly, 
who reads the morning j)aper with unction, and his 
Bible with determination, — who Hstens to dull ser- 
mons mth patience, and who prays with quiet self- 
applause ; and yet there are moments belonging to 
his life, when his curdled affections yearn for some- 
thing that they have not, — when his avarice over- 
steps all the commandments, ■ — when his pride 
builds castles full of splendor ; and yet put this be- 
fore his eye, and he reads with the most careless air 
in the world, and condemns as arrant fiction, what 
cannot be proven to the elders. 

"We no not like to see our emotions unriddled : it 
is not agreeable to the proud man to find his weak- 
nesses exposed ; it is shocking to the disappointed 



WITH MY READER, 15 

lover to see his heart laid bare ; it is a great grief 
to the pining maiden to witness the exposure of her 
loves. We do not Hke our fancies painted ; we do 
not contrive them for rehearsal : our dreams are 
private, and when they are made pubhc, we disown 
them. 

I sometimes think that I must be a very honest 
fellow for writing down those fancies, — which every 
one else seems afraid to whisper. I shall at least 
come in for my share of the odium in entertaining 
such fancies ; indeed I shall expect the charge of en- 
tertaining them exclusively, and shall scarce exj^ect 
to find a single fellow-confessor, unless it be some 
pure and innocent-thoughted gii'l, who will say 
*'peccam" to — here and there — a single rainbow 
fancy. 

Well, I can bear it ; but in bearing it, I shall be 
consoled with the reflection that I have a great com- 
pany of fellow-sufferers, who lack only the honesty 
to teU me of their sympathy. It will even reheve in 
no small degree my burden to watch the effort they 
will take to conceal, what I have so boldly divulged. 

Nature is very much the same thing in one man 
that it is in another ; and, as I have akeady said. 
Feeling has a higher truth in it than circumstance. 
Let it only be touched fairly and honestly, and the 
heart of Humanity answers; but if it be touched 



i6 DREAM-LIFE. 

foully or one-sidedly, you may find here and there a 
lame-souled creature who will give response, but 
there is no heart-throb in it. 

Of one thing I am sure : if my pictures are fair, 
worthy, and hearty, you must see it in the reading ; 
but if they are forced and hard, no amount of kind- 
ness can make you feel their truth, as I want them 
felt. 

I make no seK-praise out of this : if feeling has 
been honestly set down, it is only in vu'tue of a na- 
tive impulse, over which I have altogether too little 
control ; but if it is set down badly, I have wronged 
Nature, and (as Nature is kind) I have wronged my- 
self. 

A great many inquisitive people will, I do not 
doubt, be asking, after aU this prelude, if my pic- 
tures are true pictures ? The question — the court- 
eous reader will allow me to say — is an impertinent 
one. It is but a shabby truth that wants an author's 
affidavit to make it trustworthy. I shall not help 
my story by any such poor support. If there are 
not enough elements of truth, honesty, and nature 
in my pictures to make them beheved, they shall 
have no oath of mine to bolster them up. 

I have been a sufferer in this way before now ; 
and a little book that I had the whim to pubhsh a 
year since, has been set down by many as an arrant 



WITH MY READER, 17 

piece of imposture. Claiming sympathy as a Bach- 
elor, I have been recklessly set down as a cold, un- 
deserving man of family ! My story of troubles 
and loves has been sneered at as the sheerest gam- 
mon. 

But among this crowd of cold-blooded critics, it 
was pleasant to hear of one or two pm-sy old fellows 
who railed at me for winning the affections of a 
sweet Italian gM, and then leaving her to pine in 
discontent. Yet in the face of this, an old com- 
panion of mine in Eome, with whom I accidentally 
met the other day, wondered how on earth I could 
have made so tempting a story out of the matronly 
and black-haired spinster with whom I happened to 
be quartered in the Eternal City. 

I shall leave my critics to settle such differences 
between themselves ; and consider it fai* better to 
bear with slanders from both sides of the house, than 
to bewray the pretty tenderness of the pursy old 
gentlemen, or to cast a doubt upon the practical tes- 
timony of my quondam companion. Both give me 
high and judicious compliment, — all the more 
gTateful because only half deserved. For I never 
yet was conscious — alas, that the confession should 
be forced from me ! — of winning the heart of any 
maiden, whether native or Itahan ; and as for such 
dehcacy of imagination as to work up a lovely dam- 



i8 DREAM-LIFE, 

sel out of the withered remnant that forty odd years 
of Itahan hfe can spare, I can assure my middle- 
aged friends, (and it may serve as a caveat,) I can 
lay no claim to it whatever. 

The trouble has been, that those who have be- 
Heved one passage, have discredited another ; and 
those who have sympathized with me in trifles, have 
deserted me when affairs grew earnest. I have had 
sympathy enough with my married griefs, but when 
it came to the perplexing torments of my single life 
— not a fellow mourner could I find ! 

I would suggest to those who intend to believe 
only half of my present book, that they exercise a 
little discretion in thek choice. I am not fastidious 
in the matter, and only ask them to beheve what 
counts most toward the goodness of humanity, and 
to discredit — if they will persist in it — only what 
tells badly for our common nature. The man, or 
the woman, who believes well, is apt to work weU ; 
and Faith is as much the key to happiness here, as 
it is the key to happiness hereafter. 

I have only one thing more to say before I get 
upon my story. A great many sharp-eyed people, 
who have a horror of light reading, — by which they 
mean whatever does not make mention of stocks, 
cottons, or moral homihes, — wiU find much fault 
with my book for its ephemeral character. 



WITH MY READER. 19 

I am sorry that I cannot gratify such: homilies 
are not at all in my habit ; and it does seem to mo 
an exhausting way of disposing of a good moral, to 
hammer it down to a single point, so that there 
shall be only one chance of dri\ing it home. For 
niy own part, I count it a great deal better philos- 
ophy to fuse it, and rarefy it, so that it shall spread 
out into every crevice of a story, and give a color, 
and a taste, as it were, to the whole mass. 

I know there are very good people, who, if they 
cannot lay their finger on so much doctrine set 
down in old-fashioned phrase, will never get an ink- 
ling of it at all. With such people, goodness is a 
thing of understanding, more than of feeling, and 
aU their morality has its action in the brain. 

God forbid that I should sneer at this terrible in- 
firmity, which Providence has seen fit to inflict ; God 
forbid, too, that I should not be grateful to the 
same kind Providence for bestowing upon others 
among his creatures a more genial apprehension of 
true goodness, and a hearty sympathy with every 
shade of hiunan kindness. 

But in all this I am not making out a case for my 
own correct teaching, or insinuating the propriety of 
my tone. I shall leave the book, in this regard, to 
speak for itself ; and whoever feels himself gi'owing 
worse for tho reading, I advise to lay it down. It 



20 DREAM-LIFE, 

will be very harmless on the shelf, however it may 
be in the hand. I 

I shall lay no claim to the title of moralist, 
teacher, or romancist: my thoughts start pleasant 
pictures to my mind ; and in a garrulous humor I 
put my finger in the button-hole of my indulgent 
friend, and tell him some of them, — giving him 
leave to quit me whenever he chooses. 

Or, if a lady is my listener, let her fancy me only 
an honest, simple-hearted fellow, whose familiarities 
are so innocent that she can pardon them; — taking 
her hand in his, and talking on ; sometimes looking 
in her eyes, and then looking into the sunshine for 
relief ; sometimes prosy with narrative, and then 
sharpening up my matter with a few touches of 
honest pathos ; — let her imagine this, I say, and we 
may become the most excellent friends in the world. 



SPRING; 

OR, 

DREAMS OF BOYHOOD. 



DREAMS OF BOYHOOD. 



Sjpring. 

TBDE old chroniclers made the year begin in the 
season of frosts ; and they have launched us 
upon the current of the months from the snowy 
banks of January. I love better to count time from 
Spring to Spring ; it seems to me far more cheerful 
to reckon the year by blossoms than by blight. 

Bernardin de St. Pierre, in his sweet story of Vir- 
ginia, makes the bloom of the cocoa-tree, or the 
growth of the banana, a yearly and a loved monitor 
of the passage of her hfe. How cold and cheerless 
in the comparison would be the icy chronology of 
the North ; — So many years have I seen the lakes 
locked, and the foliage die ! 

The budding and blooming of Spring seem to be- 



24 DREAM-LIFE. 

long properly to the opening of the months. It is 
the season of the quickest expansion, of the warm- 
est blood, of the readiest growth ; it is the boy-age 
of the year. The bkds sing in chorus in the Spring 
— just as children prattle ; the brooks run full — 
like the overflow of young hearts ; the showers drop 
easily — as young tears flow ; and the whole sky is 
as capricious as the mind of a boy. 

Between tears and smiles, the year, like the child, 
struggles into the warmth of Hf e. The Old Year — 
say what the chronologists will — lingers upon the 
very lap of Spring, and is only faMy gone when the 
blossoms of April have strown their pall of glory 
upon his tomb, and the bluebirds have chanted his 
requiem. 

It always seems to me as if an access of life came 
with the melting of the winter's snows, and as if 
every rootlet of grass, that lifted its first green blade 
from the matted debris of the old year's decay, bore 
my spirit upon it, nearer to the lai'gess of Heaven. 

I love to trace the break of Spring step by step : 
I love even those long rain-storms, that sap the icy 
fortresses of the lingering winter, — that melt the 
snows upon the hills, and swell the mountain- 
brooks, — that make the pools heave up their glassy 
cerements of ice, and hurry down the crashing frag- 
ments into the wastes of ocean. 



SPRING. 25 

I love the gentle thaws that you can trace, day by 
day, by the stained snow-banks, shrinking from the 
gi-ass ; and by the quiet drip of the cottage-eaves. I 
love to search out the sunny slopes under some 
northern shelter where the reflected sun does double 
duty to the earth, and where the frail Hepatica, or 
the faint blush of the Arbutus, in the midst of the 
bleak March atmosphere, wiU touch your heart, 
like a hope of Heaven in a field of graves. Later 
come those soft, smoky days, when the patches of 
winter grain show green under the shelter of leafless 
woods, and the last snow-drifts, reduced to shrunken 
skeletons of ice, lie upon the slope of northern hills, 
leaking away their Hfe. 

Then the gi-ass at your door grows into the color 
of the sprouting grain, and the buds upon the hlacs 
swell and burst. The peaches bloom upon the wall, 
and the plums wear bodices of white. The spark- 
ling oriole picks string for his hammock on the syca-? 
more, and the sparrows twitter in pairs. The old 
elms throw down their dingy flowers, and color their 
spray with green ; and the brooks, where you throw 
your woim or the minnow, float down whole fleets 
of the crimson blossoms of the majDle. Finally the 
oaks step into the opening quadrille of spring, with 
grayish tufts of a modest verdure, which by-and-by 
wiU be long and glossy leaves. The dog-wood 



26 DREAM-LIFE. 

pitches his broad, white tent in the edge of the for- 
est ; the dandehons He along the hillocks, like stars 
in a sky of green ; and the wild cherry, growing in 
all the hedge-rows, without other culture than God's, 
lifts up to Him thankfully its tremulous white fingers. 

Amid all this come the rich rains of spring. The 
aifections of a boy gi-ow up with tears to water them ; 
and the year blooms with showers. But the clouds 
hover over an April sky timidly, like shadows upon 
innocence. The showers come gently, and drop 
daintily to the earth, — with now and then a ghmpse 
of sunshine to make the drops bright — like so 
many bubbles of joy. 

The rain of winter is cold, and it comes in bitter 
scuds that blind you ; but the rain of April steals 
upon you coyly, half reluctantly, — yet lovingly — 
like the steps of a bride to the Altar. 

It does not gather like the storm-clouds of winter, 
gray and heavy along the horizon, and creep with 
subtle and insensible approaches (like age) to the 
very zenith ; but there are a score of white-winged 
swimmers afloat, that your eye has chased as you lay 
beguiled with the delicious warmth of an April 
sun ; — nor have you scarce noticed that a little 
bevy of those floating clouds had grouped together 
in a sombre company. But presently you see across 
the fields the dark gray streaks, stretching like lines 



SPRING. 27 

of mist from the green bosom of the valley to that 
spot of sky where the company of clouds is loiter- 
ing ; and with an easy shifting of the helm the fleet 
of swimmers come, drifting over you, and drop their 
burden into the dancing pools, and make the 
flowers ghsten, and the eaves drip with their crystal 
bounty. 

The cattle linger by the watercourses, cropping 
eagerly the firsthngs of the grass ; and childhood 
laughs joyously at the warm rain, or imder the cot- 
tage-roof catches with eager ear the patter of its 
fall. 

And with that patter on the roof, — so like 

to the patter of childish feet, — my story of boyish 
dreams shall becin. 



Rain in the Garret, 

IT is an old garret with big brown rafters ; and 
the boards between are stained darkly with the 
rain-storms of fifty years. And as the sportive April 
shower quickens its flood, it seems as if its torrents 
would come dashing through the shingles upon you, 
and upon your play. But they will not ; for you know 
that the old roof is strong, and that it has kept you, 
and all that love you, for long years from the rain 
and from the cold ; you know that the hardest 
storms of winter will only make a httle oozing leak, 
that trickles down, leaving homely brown stains. 

You love that old garret-roof ; and you nestle 
down under its slope with a sense of its protecting 
power that no castle-walls can give to your matui'er 
years. Aye, your heart cHngs in boyhood to the 
roof-tree of the old family garret with a grateful af- 



RAIN IN THE GARRET, 29 

fection and an abiding confidence, that the after- 
years — whatever may be their successes, or their 
honors — can never re-create. Under the roof -tree 
of his home the boy feels safe : and where in the 
whole realm of Hfe, with its bitter toils and its bit- 
terer temptations, will he feel mfe again ? 

But this you do not know. It seems only a grand 
old place ; and it is capital fun to search in its cor- 
ners, and drag out some bit of quaint furniture, 
with a leg broken, and lay a cushion across it, and 
fix your reins upon the Hon's claws of the feet, and 
then — gallop away ! And you offer sister Nelly a 
chance, if she will be good ; and throw out very pat- 
ronizing words to Httle Charlie, who is mounted 
upon a much humbler horse, — to wit, a decrepit 
nursery-chair, — as he of right should be, since he 
is thi*ee years your junior. 

I know no nobler forage-ground for a romantic, 
venturesome, mischievous boy, than the garret of an 
old family mansion on a day of storm. It is a per- 
fect field of chivaky. The heavy rafters, the dash- 
ing rain, the piles of spare mattresses to carouse 
upon, the big trunks to hide in, the ancient white 
coats and hats hanging in obscure comers, like 
ghosts, — are great ! And it is so far away from 
the old lady who keeps rule in the nurseiy, that 
there is no possible risk of a scolding for twisting 



30 DREAM-LIFE, 

off the fringe of the rug. There is no baby in the 
garret to wake up. There is no " company " in the 
garret to be disturbed by the noise. There is no 
crotchety Uncle, or Grand-Mamma, with their ever- 
lasting " Boys, boys ! " and then a look of such 
horror ! 

There is great fun in groping through a tall bar- 
rel of books and pamphlets, on the look-out for 
starthng pictures ; and there are chestnuts in the 
garret drying, which you have discovered on a 
ledge of the chimney ; and you slide a few into your 
pocket, and munch them quietly, — giving now and 
then one to NeUy, and begging her to keep silent, — 
for you have a great fear of its being forbidden 
fruit. 

Old family garrets have their stock, as I said, of 
castaway clothes of twenty years gone by ; and it is 
rare sport to put them on ; buttoning in a pillow or 
two for the sake of good fulness ; and then to trick 
out Nelly in some strange-shaped head-gear, and 
ancient brocade petticoat caught up with pins ; and 
in such guise to steal cautiously down-stairs, and 
creep slyly into the sitting-room, — half afraid of a 
scolding, and very sure of good fun, — trying to 
look very sober, and yet almost ready to die with 
the laugh that you know you will make. And your 
mother tries to look harshly at httle Nelly for put- 



RAIN IN THE GARRET. 31 

ting on her grandmother's best bonnet ; but Nelly's 
laughing eyes forbid it utterly ; and the mother 
Spoils all her scolding with a perfect shower of 
kisses. 

After this you go, marching very stately, into the 
nursery, and utterly amaze the old nurse ; and make 
a deal of wonderment for the staring, half-fright- 
ened baby, who drops his rattle, and makes a bob 
at you as if he w^ould jump into your waistcoat- 
pocket. . 

But you gi'ow tired of this ; you tire even of the 
swing, and of the pranks of Charlie ; and you glide 
away into a corner with an old, dog's-eared copy of 
" Kobinson Cinisoe." And you grow heart and soul 
into the story, until you tremble for the poor fellow 
with his guns behind the palisade ; and are j^ourseK 
half dead with fright when you peep cautiously over 
the hill with your glass, and see the cannibals at 
thek orgies around the fire. 

Yet, after all, you think the old fellow must have 
had a capital time with a whole island to himself ; 
and you think you would like such a time your- 
self, if only Nelly and CharHe could be there with 
you. But this thought does not come till afterward ; 
for the time you are nothing but Cinisoe ; you are 
living in his cave with Poll the parrot, and are look- 
ing out for your goats and man Friday. 



32 DREAM-LIFE, 

You dream what a nice thing it would be for you 
to sHp away some pleasant morning, — not to York, 
as young Cinisoe did, but to New York, — and take 
passage as a sailor ; and how, if they knew you were 
going, there would be such a world of good-byes ; 
and how, if they did not know it, there would be 
such a world of wonder I 

And then the sailor's dress would be altogether 
such a jaunty affair; and it would be such rare sport 
to lie off upon the yards far aloft, as you have seen 
sailors in pictures, looking out upon the blue and 
tumbling sea. No thought now, in your boyish 
dreams, of sleety storms, and cables stiffened with 
ice, and crashing spars, and great icebergs towering 
fearfully around you ! 

You would have better luck than even Crusoe ; 
you would save a compass, and a Bible, and stores 
of hatchets, and the ca^Dtain's dog, and great pun- 
cheons of sweetmeats, (which Crusoe altogether 
overlooked ;) and you would save a tent or two, 
which you could set up on the shore, and an Ameri- 
can flag, and a small piece of cannon, which you 
could fire as often as you hked. At night you would 
sleep in a tree, — though you wonder how Crusoe 
did it, — and would say the prayers you had been 
taught to say at home, and fall to sleep, dreaming of 
Nelly and Charhe. 



RAIN IN THE GARRET. 33 

At sunrise, or thereabouts, you would come down, 
feeling very inuch refreshed ; and make a very nice 
breakfast off of smoked herring and sea-bread, with 
a httle currant jam, and a few oranges. After this 
you would haul ashore a chest or two of the sailors' 
clothes, and putting a few large jackknives in your 
pocket, would take a stroll over the island, and dig 
a cave somewhere, and roU in a cask or two of sea- 
bread. And you fancy yourself growing after a 
time very taU and corpulent, and wearing a magnifi- 
cent goat-skin cap trimmed with green ribbons, and 
set off with a plume. You think you would have 
put a few more guns in the palisade than Crusoe 
did, and charged them with a little more grape. 

After a long while you fancy a ship would arrive 
which would carry you back ; and you count upon 
very great surprise on the part of your father and 
little NeUy, as you march up to the door of the old 
family mansion, with plenty of gold in your pocket, 
and a small bag of cocoa-nuts for Charlie, and with 
a great deal of pleasant tallt about your island far 
away in the South Seas. 

Or perhaps it is not Crusoe at all, that your 

eyes and your heart cling to, but only some little 
stor}^ about Paul and Virginia; — that dear htt-le 
Virginia ! how many tears have been shed over her 
— not in garrets only, or by boys only ! 
3 



34 DREAM-LIFE. 

You would haye liked Virginia, — you know you 
would ; but you perfectly hate the beldame aunt 
v*^ho sent for her to come to France ; you think she 
must have been like the old schoolmistress, who 
occasionally boxes your ears with the cover of the 
spelling-book, or makes you wear one of the girls* 
bonnets, that smells strongly of pasteboard and 
calico. 

As for black Domingue, you think he was a capi- 
tal old fellow ; and you think more of him and his 
bananas than you do of the bursting, throbbmg 
heart of poor Paul. As yet Dream-life does not take 
hold on love. A little maturity of heai*t is wanted 
to make up what the poets call sensibility. If love 
should come to be a dangerous, chivalric matter, as 
in the case of Helen Mar and Wallace, you can very 
easily conceive of it, and can take hold of all the 
little accessories of male costume and embroidering 
of banners ; but as for pure sentiment, such as lies 
in the sweet story of Bernardin de St. Pierre, it is 
quite beyond you. 

The rich, soft nights, in which one might doze in 
his hammock, watching the play of the silvery moon- 
beams upon the orange-leaves and upon the waves, 
you can understand ; and you fall to dreaming of 
that lovely Isle of France, and wondering if Vir- 
ginia did not perhaps have some relations on the 



RAIN IN THE GARRET. 35 

island, who raise pine-apples, and such sort of things, 
stiU? 

And so with your head upon your hand in 

your quiet garret-corner, over some such beguiling 
story, your thought leans away from the book into 
your own dreamy cruise over the sea of life. 



n. 

BcJiool-Dveams, 

IT is a proud thing to go out from under the realm 
of a schoolmistress, and to be enrolled in a 
company of boys, who are under the guidance of a 
master. It is one of the earliest steps of worldly 
pride, which has before it a long and tedious ladder 
of ascent. Even the advice of the old mistress, and 
the ninepenny book that she thrusts into your hand 
as a parting gift, pass for nothing ; and her kiss of 
adieu, if she tenders it in the sight of your fellows, 
wiU call up an angry rush of blood to the cheek, 
that for long years shaE drown aU sense of its 
kindness. 

You have looked admiringly many a day upon the 
tall fellows who play at the door of Dr. Bidlow's 
school; you have looked with reverence — second 
only to that felt for the old village church — upon 



SCHOOL-DREAMS, yj 

its dark-looking, heavy brick walls. It seemed to 
be redolent of learning ; and stopping at times to 
gaze upon the gallipots and broken retorts at tlie 
second-stoiy window, you have pondered in your 
boyish way upon the inscrutable wonders of Science, 
and the ineffable dignity of Dr. Bidlow. 

The Doctor seems to you to belong to a race of 
giants; and yet he is a spare, thin man, with a 
hooked nose, a large, flat, gold watch-key, a crack 
in his voice, a wig, and very dirty wiistbands. StiQ 
you stand in awe at the mere sight of him, — an awe 
that is ver}^ much encouraged by a report made to 
you by a small boy, that "Old Bid" keeps a large 
ebony ruler in his desk. You are amazed at the 
small boy's audacity ; it astonishes you that any one 
who had ever smelt the strong fumes of sulphur and 
ether in the Doctor's room, and had seen him turn 
red vinegar blue, (as they say he does,) should call 
him '' Old Bid ! " 

You, however, come very httle under his control ; 
you enter upon the proud life, in the small boys* 
department, under the dominion of the English 
master. He is a different personage from Dr. Bid- 
low : he is a dapper Httle man, who twinkles his eye 
in a peculiar fashion, and who has a way of march- 
ing about the school-room with his hands crossed 
behind him, giving a playful flirt to his coat-tails. 



38 DREAM-LIFE. 

He wears a pen tucked behind his ear ; his hair is 
carefully set up at the sides and upon the top, to 
conceal (as you think later in life) his diminutive 
height ; and he steps very springily around behind 
the benches, glancing now and then at the books, — 
cautioning one scholar about his dog's ears, and 
startling another from a doze by a very loud and 
odious snap of his forefinger upon the boy's head. 

At other times he sticks a hand in the armlet of 
his waistcoat ; he brandishes in the other a thickish 
bit of smooth cherry-wood, sometimes dressing his 
hair withal; and again giving his head a slight 
scratch behind the ear, while he takes occasion at 
the same time for an oblique glance at a fat boy in 
the comer, who is reaching down from his seat after 
a little paper pellet that has just been discharged at 
him from some unknown quarter. The master 
steals very cautiously and quickly to the rear of the 
stooping boy, dreadfully exposed by his unfortunate 
position, and inflicts a stinging blow. A weak-eyed 
little scholar on the next bench ventures a modest 
titter, at which the assistant makes a significant 
motion with his ruler, — on the seat, as it were, of 
an imaginary pair of trowsers, — which renders the 
weak-eyed boy on a sudden very insensible to the 
recent joke. 

You, meantime, profess to be very much engrossed 



SCHOOL-DREAMS. 39 

with your grammar — turned upside-down ; you 
think it must have hurt, and are only sorry that it 
did not happen to a tall, dark-faced boy, who cheat- 
ed you in a swop of jackknives. You innocently 
think that he must be a very bad boy ; and fancy — 
aided by a suggestion of the old nurse at home on 
the same point — that he will one day come to the 
gallows. 

There is a platform on one side of the school- 
room, where the teacher sits at a little red table ; 
and they have a tradition among the boys, that a 
pin properly bent was one day put into the chair of 
the EngUsh master, and that he did not wear his 
hand in the armlet of his waistcoat for two whole 
days thereafter. Yet his air of dignity seems projDer 
enough in a man of such erudition, and such grasp 
of imagination, as he must possess. For he can 
quote poetry, — some of the big scholars have heard 
him do it ; he can parse the whole of *' Paradise 
Lost," and he can cipher in Long Division, and the 
Rule of Three, as if it was all Simple Addition ; and 
then, such a hand as he writes, and such a superb 
capital B ! It is hard to understand how he does it. 

Sometimes hfting the lid of your desk, where you 
pretend to be very busy Vvdth your papers, you steal 
the reading of some brief passage of " Lazy Law- 
rence," or of the ''Hungarian Brothers," and muse 



40 DREAM-LIFE, 

about it for hours afterward, to the great detriment 
of your ciphering ; or, deeply lost in the story of 
the "Scottish Chiefs," you fall to comparing such 
villains as Menteith with the stout boys who tease 
you ; and you only wish they could come within 
reach of the fierce Ku-kpatrick's claymore. 

But you are frighted out of this stolen reading by 
a circumstance that stirs your young blood very 
strangely. The master is looking very sourly on a 
cei-tain morning, and has caught sight of the little 
weak-eyed boy over beyond you, reading " Eoderick 
Random." He sends out for a long birch rod, and 
having trimmed off the leaves carefully, — with a 
glance or two in your direction, — he marches up 
behind the bench of the poor culprit, — who turns 
deathly pale, — grapples him by the collar, drags him 
out over the desks, his limbs dangling in a shocking 
way against the sharp angles, and having him fairly 
in the middle of the room, clinches his rod with a 
new, and as it seems to you, a dreadfully sportive grip. 

You shudder fearfully. 

*' Please don't whip me," says the boy, whimper- 
ing. 

" Aha ! " says the smirking pedagogue, bringing 
down the stick with a quick, sharp cut, — " you don't 
like it, eh?" 

The poor fellow screams, and struggles to escape ; 



SCHOOL-DREAMS. 41 

but the blows come faster and thicker. The blood 
tingles in your finger-ends with indignation. 

" Please don't strike me again," says the boy, sob- 
bing, and taking breath, as he writhes about the 
legs of the master ; "I won't read another time." 

"Ah, you won't, sir — won't you? I don't mean 
you shall, sir ; " and the blows fall thick and fast, un- 
til the poor fellow crawls back, utterly crestfallen 
and heart-sick, to sob over his books. 

You grow into a sudden boldness ; you wish you 
were only large enough to beat the master ; you 
know such treatment would make you miserable ; 
you shudder at the thought of it ; you do not be- 
lieve he would dare ; you know the other boy has 
got no father. This seems to throw a new light up- 
on the matter, but it only intensifies your indigna- 
tion. You are sm-e that no father would suffer it ; 
or, if you thought so, it would sadly weaken your 
love for him. You pray Heaven, that it may never 
be brought to such proof. 

Let a boy once distrust the love or the ten- 
derness of his parents, and the last resort of his 
yearning affections — so far as the world goes— is ut- 
terly gone. He is in the sure road to a bitter fate. 
His heart will take on a hard, iron covering, that 
will flash out plenty of fii-e in his after contact with 
the world, but it will never — never melt. 



42 DREAM-LIFE. 

There are some tall trees that overshadow an 
angle of the schoolhouse ; and the larger scholars 
play some very sm-prising gymnastic tricks upon 
their lower limbs : one boy, for instance, will hang 
for an incredible length of time by his feet with his 
head down ; and when you tell Charlie of it at night, 
with such additions as your boyish imagination can 
contrive, the old nurse is shocked, and states very 
gravely, that it is dangerous, and that the blood all 
runs to the head, and sometimes bursts out of the 
eyes and mouth. You look at that particular boy 
with astonishment afterward, and expect to see him 
some day burst into bleeding from the nose and ears, 
and flood the schoolroom benches. 

In time however you get to performing some mod- 
est experiments yourself upon the very lowest limbs, 
taking care to avoid the observation of the larger 
boys, who else might laugh at you ; you especially 
avoid the notice of one stout fellow in pea-gi-een 
breeches, who is a sort of " bully " among the small 
boys, and who delights in kicking your marbles 
about very accidentally. He has a fashion too of 
twisting his handkerchief into what he calls a " snajD- 
per," with a knot at the end, and cracking at you 
with it, very much to the irritation of your spirits 
and of your legs. 

Sometimes, when he has brought you to an angry 



SCHOOL-DREAMS. 43 

burst of tears, he will very graciously force upon 
you the handkerchief, and insist upon your cracking 
him in return ; which, as you know nothing about 
his effective method of making the knot bite, is a 
very harmless proposal on his part. 

But you have still stronger reason to remember 
that boy. There are trees, as I said, near the 
school ; and you get the rej)utation, after a time, of 
a good climber. One day you are well in the tops 
of the trees, and being dared by the boys below, 
you venture higher — higher than any boy has ever 
gone before. You feel very proudty, but just then 
catch sight of the sneering face of your old enemy 
of the snapper; and he dares you to go upon a 
Hmb that he points out. 

The rest say, — for you hear them plainly, — "It 
won't bear him." And Frank, a great friend of 
yom-s, shouts loudly to you not to try. 

"Pho," says your tormenter, — "the Uttle cow- 
ard ! " 

If you could whip him, you would go down the 
tree, and do it wiUingl}^ ; as it is, you cannot let him 
triumph ; so you advance cautiously out upon the 
limb ; it bends and sways fearfully with your 
weight ; presently it cracks ; you try to return, but 
it is too late ; you feel yourseK going ; your mind 
flashes home — over your life, your hope, your fate 



44 DREAM-LIFE. 

— like lightning ; then comes a sense of dizziness, a ij 
succession of quick blows, and a dull, heavy crash ! ! 

You are conscious of nothing again, until you find ij 
yourself in the great hall of the school, covered with J 
blood, the old Doctor standing over you with a ; 
phial, and Frank kneeling by you, and holding your 
shattered arm, which has been broken by the fall. 

After this come those long, weary days of con- 
finement, when you lie still through all the hours of ' 
noon, looking out upon the cheerful sunshine only 
through the windows of your little room. Yet it 
seems a grand thing to have the whole household 
attendant upon you. The doors are opened and 
shut softly, and they all step noiselessly about your 
chamber ; and when you groan with pain, you are 
sure of meeting sad, sympathizing looks. Your 
mother will step gently to your side and lay her 
cool, white hand upon your forehead ; and little 
Nelly will gaze at you from the foot of your bed 
with a sad earnestness, and with tears of pity in her 
soft hazel eyes. And afterward, as your pain passes 
away, she will bring you her prettiest books, and 
fresh flowers, and whatever she knows you will love. 

But it is dreadful when you wake at night from 
your feverish slumber, and see nothing but the spec- 
tral shadows that the sick-lamp upon the hearth 
throws aslant the walls ; and hear nothing but the 



SCHOOL-DREAMS. 45 

heavy breatliing of the nui'se in the easy-chair, and 
the ticking of the clock upon the mantel. Then 
sUence and the night crowd upon your soul drearily. 
But your thought is active. It shapes at your bed- 
side the loved figure of your mother, or it calls up 
the w^hole company of Dr. Bidlow's boys, and weeks 
of study or of play gi'oup like magic on your quick- 
ened vision ; then a twinge of pain will call again 
the dreaiiness, and your head tosses upon the pillow, 
and your eye searches the gloom vainly for pleasant 
faces ; and your fears brood on that di-earier, coming 
night of Death — far longer, and far more cheerless 
than this. 

But even here the memory of some Httle prayer 
you have been taught, which promises a Morning 
after the Night, comes to your throbbing brain ; and 
its mm-mur on your fevered lips, as you breathe it, 
soothes Hke a caress, and wooes you to smiles and 
sleep. 

As the days pass, you grow stronger ; and Frank 
comes in to tell you of the school, and that your old 
tormentor has been expelled ; and you gi'ow into a 
strong friendship with Frank, and you think of your- 
selves as a new Damon and Pythias, and that you 
will some day live together in a fine house, with 
plenty of horses, and plenty of chestnut-trees. Alas, 
the boy counts httle on those later and bitter fates 



46 DREAM-LIFE, 

of life, which sever his early friendships hke wisps 
of straw ! 

At other times, with your eye upon the sleek, trim 
figure of the Doctor, and upon his huge bunch of 
watch-seals, you think you will some day be a Doc- 
tor ; and that with a wife and children, and a respect- 
able gig, and gold watch, with seals to match, you 
would needs be a very happy fellow. 

And vrith such fancies drifting on your thought, 
you coimt for the hundredth time the figures upon 
the ciu'tains of your bed ; you trace out the flower- 
wreaths upon the paper-hangings of your room ; 
your eyes rest idly on the cat playing with the fringe 
of the curtain ; you see your mother sitting with her 
needle-work beside the fire ; you watch the sim- 
beams, as they drift along the carpet, from morning 
until noon ; and from noon till night you watch 
them playing on the leaves, and dropping spangles 
on the lawn ; and as you watch — you dream. 



m. 

Boy Sentitnent 

WEEKS and even years of your boyhood roll 
on, in the which your dreams are growing 
wider and grander, — even as the Spring, which I 
have made the type of the boy-age, is stretching its 
foHage farther and farther, and dropping longer and 
heavier shadows on the land. 

Nelly, that sweet sister, has grown into your heart 
strangely ; and you think that all they write in their 
books about love cannot equal your fondness for ht- 
tle Nelly. She is pretty, they say ; but what do you 
care for her prettiness ? She is so good, so kind, so 
watchful of all your wants, so willing to yield to your 
haughty claims. 

But, alas ! it is only when this sisterly love is lost 
forever, — only when the inexorable world separates 
a family, and tosses it upon the waves of fate to wide- 



48 DREAM-LIFE. 

lying distances, perhaps to graves, — that an) an feels, 
what a boy can never know, — the disinterested and 
abiding affection of a sister. 

All this that I have set down comes back to you 
long afterward, when you recall with sighs of regret 
youi' reproachful words, or some swift outbreak of 
passion. 

Little Madge is a friend of Nelly's, — a mischiev- 
ous, blue-eyed hoyden. They tease you about 
Madge. You do not of course care one straw for 
her, but yet it is rather pleasant to be teased thus. 
Nelly never does this ; oh no, not she. I do not 
know but in the age of childhood the sister is jeal- 
ous of the affections of a brother, and would keej) 
his heart wholly at home, until, suddenly and 
strangely, she finds her own wandering. 

But after aU Madge is pretty, and there is some- 
thing taking in her name. Old peo]3le, and very 
precise people, call her Margaret Boyne. But you 
do not : it is only plain Madge ; it sounds like her, 
very rapid and mischievous. It would be She most 
absurd thing in the world for you to like her, for 
she teases j^ou in innumerable ways : she laughs at 
your big shoes, (such a sweet little foot as she has !) 
and she pins strips of paper on j^our coat-collar ; and 
time and again she has worn off your hat in triumph, 
very well knowing that you — such a quiet body, and 



BOY SENTIMENT. 49 

so much afraid of lier — will never venture upon any 
liberties with her gj'psy bonnet. 

You sometimes wish in j^our vexation, as you see 
her running, that she would fall and hurt herself 
badly ; but the next moment it seems a very wicked 
wish, and you renoimce it. Once she did come very 
near it. You were all playing together by the big 
swing ; (how plainly it swings in your memory now !) 
Madge had the seat, and you were famous for run- 
ning under with a long push, which Madge liked 
better than anything else ; — well, you have half run 
over the ground when, crash ! comes the swing, and 
poor Madge with it! You fairly scream as you 
catch her up. But she is not hurt, — • only a cry of 
fright, and a little sprain of that fairy ankle ; and as 
she brushes away the tears and those flaxen curls, 
and breaks into a meny laugh, — half at your woe- 
worn face, and half in vexation at herself, — and leans 
her hand (such a hand !) upon your shoulder, to hmp 
away into the shade, you dream your first dream of 
love. 

But it is only a dream, not at all acknowledged 
by you ; she is three or four years your junior, — 
too young altogether. It is very absurd to talk 
about it. There is nothing to be said of Madge, 
only — Madge ! The name does it. 

It is rather a pretty name to write. You are fond 
4 



50 DREAM-LIFE, 

of making capital M's; and sometimes you follow 
them with a capital A. Then you practise a Httle 
upon a D, and perhaps back it up with a G. Of 
coiorse it is the merest accident that these letters 
come together. It seems funny to you — very. And 
as a proof that they are made at random, you make 
a T or an R before them, and some other quite ir- 
relevant letters after it. 

Finally, as a sort of security against all suspicion, 
you cross it out, — cross it a great many ways, even 
holding it up to the light to see that there should 
be no air of intention about it. 

You need have no fear, Clarence, that your 

hieroglyphics will be studied so closely. Accidental 
as they are, you are very much more interested in 
them than any one else. 

It is a common fallacy of this dream in most 

stages of life, that a vast number of persons employ 
their time chiefly in sjDying out its operations. 

Yet Madge cares nothing about you, that you 
know of. Perhaps it is the very reason, though 
you do not suspect it then, why you care so much 
for her. At any rate she is a friend of Nelly's, and 
it is your duty not to dislike her. NeUy too, sweet 
Nelly, gets an inkling of matters, — for sisters are 
very shrewd in suspicions of this sort, shrewder 
than brothers or fathers, — and, like the good, kind 



BOV SENTIMENT. 51 

girl that slie is, she wishes to humor even your 
weakness. 

Madge drops in to tea quite often : Nelly has 
something in partixiular to show her, two or three 
times a week. Good Nelly ! Perhaps she is 
making your troubles all the greater. You gather 
large bunches of gi-apes for Madge — because she 
is a friend of Nelly's — which she doesn't want at all, 
and very pretty bouquets, which she either drops 
or pulls to pieces. 

In the presence of j^our father one day you drop 
some hint about Madge in a very careless way, — a 
way shrewdly calculated to lay all suspicion, — at 
which your father laughs. This is odd ; it makes 
you wonder if your father was ever in love himself. 

You rather think that he has been. 

Madge's father is dead, and her mother is poor ; 
and you sometimes dream how — whatever your 
father may think or feel — you will some day make 
a large fortune, in some very easy way, and build a 
snug cottage, and have one horse for your carriage 
and one for your wife, (not Madge, of coui-se — that 
is absui'd,) and a turtle-shell cat for your wife's 
mother, and a pretty gate to the front yard, and 
plenty of shrubbery ; and how your wife will come 
dancing down the path to meet you, — as the Wife 
does m Mr. Irving's *' Sketch-Book," — and how she 



I 



52 DREAM-LIFE. 

will have a harp in the parlor, and will wear white 
dresses with a blue sash. 

Poor Clarence, it never occurs to you that 

even Madge may grow fat, and wear check aprons, 
and snuffy-brown dresses of woollen stuff, and twist 
her hair in yellow papers. Oh, no, boyhood has no 
such dreams as that ! 

I shall leave you here in the middle of your first 
foray into the world of sentiment, with those wicked 
blue eyes chasing rainbows over your heart, and 
those little feet walking every day into your affec- 
tions. I shall leave you, before the affair has 
ripened into any overtures, and while there is only 
a sixpence split in halves, and tied about your neck 
and Maggie's neck, to bind your destinies together. 

If I even hinted at any probabihty of your mann- 
ing her, or of your not marrying her, you would be 
very likely to dispute me. One knows his own 
feelings, or thinks he does, so much better than any 
one can tell him. 



IV. 

A Friend Made and Friend Lost 

TO visit, is a great tHng in the boy calendar ; 
— not, to visit this or that neighbor, — to drink 
tea, or eat strawberi'ies, or play at draughts, — but 
to go away on a visit — in a coach, with a trunk, and 
a great-coat, and an umbrella — this is large ! 

It makes no difference that they wish to be rid of 
your noise, now that Charlie is ill with a fever : the 
reason is not at all in the way of your pride of visit- 
ing. You are to have a long ride in a coach, and 
eat a dinner at a tavern, and to see a new town 
almost as large as the one you live in ; and you are 
to make new acquaintances. In short, you are to 
see the world : a very proud thing it is to see 
the world. 

As you journey on, after bidding your friends 
adieu, and as you see fences and houses to which 



54 DREAM-LIFE, 

you have not been used, you think them very odd 
indeed : but it occiirs to you that the geographies 
speak of very various national characteristics, and 
you are greatly gratified with this opportunity of 
verifying your study. You see new crops too, per- 
haps a broad-leaved tobacco-field, which reminds 
you pleasantly of the luxuriant vegetation of the 
tropics, spoken of by Peter Parley, and others. 

As for the houses and bams in the new town, 
they quite startle you with their strangeness : you 
observe that some of the latter, instead of having 9 
one stable-door have five or six, — a fact which 
puzzles you very much indeed. You observe further 
that the houses many of them have balustrades 
upon the top, which seems to you a very wonderful 
adaptation to the wants of boys who wish to fly 
kites, or to play upon the roof. You notice with 
special favor one very low roof, which you might 
climb upon by a mere plank, and you think the 
boys whose father hves in that house are very 
fortunate boys. 

Your old aunt, whom you visit, you think wears a 
very queer cap, being altogether different from that 
of the old nurse, or of Mrs. Boyne, — Madge's 
mother. As for the house she hves in, it is quite 
wonderful. There are such an immense number of 
closets, and closets within closets, reminding you of 



A FRIEND MADE AND FRIEND LOST. 55 

the mysteries of "Kinaldo Kinaldini." Besides 
which there are immensely curious bits of old 
furnitui-e — so black and heavy, and with such 
coi'ious carsing, as makes you think of the old wain- 
scot in the "Children of the Abbey." You think 
you will never tire of rambling about in its odd 
corners, and of what glorious stories you will have 
to tell of it when you go back to Nelly and Charlie. 

As for acquaintances, you fall in, on the very first 
day with a tall boy next door, called Nat ; which 
seems an extraordinaiy name. Besides, he has 
travelled ; and as he sits with you on the summer 
nights under the Hnden-trees, he tells you gorgeous 
stories of the things he has seen. He has made the 
voyage to London ; and he talks about the ship (a 
real ship), and starboard and larboai'd, and the 
sx^anker, in a way quite sui-prising ; and he takes 
the stern-oar in the little skiff, when you row ^^. in 
the cove abreast of the town, in a most seaman-like 
and altogether astonishing manner. 

He bewilders you too, with his talk about the 
great bridges of London, — London Bridge spe- 
cially, where they sell kids for a penny ; which 
story your new acquaintance unfortunately does nob 
confirm. You have read of these bridges, and seen 
pictures of them in the " Wonders of the World " ; 
but then Nat has seen them with his own eyes : he 



56 DREAM'LIFE, 

has literally walked over London Bridge, on his own 
feet ! You look at his very shoes in wonderment, 
and are surprised you do not find some startling 
difference between those shoes and your shoes. 
But there is none, — only yours are a trifle stouter 
in the welt. You think Nat one of the fortunate 
boys of this world, — born, as your old nurse used 
to say, with a gold spoon in his mouth. 

Besides Nat there is a gui who lives over the op- 
posite side of the way, named Jenny, — with an eye 
as black as a coal, and a half a year older than you, 
but about your height, — whom you fancy amaz- 
ingly. 

She has any quantity of toys, that she lets you 
play with as if they were your own. And she 
has an odd old uncle, who sometimes makes you 
stand up together, and then marries you after his 
fashion, — much to the amusement of a grown-up 
housemaid, whenever she gets a peep at the per- 
formance. And it makes you somewhat proud to 
hear her called your wife ; and you wonder to 
your self, dreamily, if it won't be true some day or 
other. 

Fie, Clarence, where is your spUt sixpence, 

'and your blue ribbon ! 

Jenny is romantic, and talks of " Thaddeus of 
Warsaw " in a very touching manner, and promises 



A FRIEND MADE AND FRIEND LOST. 57 

to lend you the book. She folds billets in a lover's 
fashion, and practises love-knots upon her bonnet- 
strings. She looks out of the corners of her eyes 
very often, and sighs. She is frequently by herself, 
and pulls flowers to pieces. She has great pity for 
middle-aged bachelors, and thinks them all disap- 
pointed men. 

After a time she writes notes to you, begging you 
would answer them at the earliest jDOssible moment, 
and signs herself — " your attached Jenny." She 
takes the marriage farce of her uncle in a cold way, 
as trifling with a very serious subject, and looks 
tenderly at you. She is very much shocked when 
her uncle offers to kiss her ; and when he j)roposes 
it to you she is equally indignant, but — with a 
great change of color. 

Nat says one day in a confidential conversation 
that it won't do to marry a woman six months older 
than youi'self ; and this, coming from Nat who has 
been to London, rather staggers you. You some- 
times think that you would like to many Madge 
and Jenny both, if the thing were possible ; for Nat 
says they sometimes do so the other side of the 
ocean, though he has never seen it done himself. 

Ah, Clarence, you will have no such weak- 
ness as you grow older ; you will find that Provi- 
dence has charitably so tempered our affections, 



58 DREAM-LIFE, 

that every man of only ordinary nerve will be amply 
satisfied with the ordinary sui)ply. 

AU this time — for you are making your visit a 
very long one, so that autumn has come, and the 
nights are growing cool, and Jenny and yourself are 
transferring your little coquetries to the chimney- 
corner — poor Charlie Hes ill at home. Boyhood, 
thank Heaven ! does not suffer severely from sym- 
pathy when the object is remote. And those letters 
from the mother, telling you that Charlie cannot 
play, — cannot talk even as he used to do, — and 
that perhaps his "Heavenly Father will take him 
away to be with him in the better world," disturb 
you for a time only. Sometimes however they come 
back to your thought on a wakeful night, and you 
dream about his suffering, and think — why it is 
not you, but Charlie, who is ill? The thought 
puzzles you ; and well it may, for in it hes the 
whole mystery of our fate. 

Those letters grow more and more discouraging, 
and the kind admonitions of your mother grow 
more earnest ; as if (though the thought does not 
come to you until years afterward) she was prepar- 
ing herself to fasten upon you that surplus of affec- 
tion which she fears may soon be withdrawn for- 
ever from the sick child. 

It is on a frosty, bleak evening, when you are 



A FRIEND MADE AND FRIEND LOST, 59 

playing witli Nat, tliat the letter reaches you which 
says Charlie is growing worse, and that you must 
come to your home. It makes a dreary night for 
you — fancying how Charlie will look, and if 
sickness has altered him much, and if he will not be 
well by Christmas. From this you fall away in 
your reverie to the odd old house and its secret 
cupboards, and your aunt's queer caps ; then come 
up those black eyes of " your attached Jenny," and 
you think it a pity that she is six months older than 
you ; and again — as you recall one of her sighs — 
you think that six months are not much after all. 

You bid her good-bye, with a httle sentiment 
swelling in your throat, and are mortally afraid Nat 
will see your hp tremble. Of course you promise 
to write, and squeeze her hand with an honesty you 
do not think of doubting — for weeks. 

It is a dull, cold ride, that day, for you. The 
winds sweep over the withered cornfields with a 
harsh, chilly whistle, and the surfaces of the Httle 
pools by the roadside are tossed up into cold blue 
wrinkles of water. Here and there a flock of quail, 
with their feathers ruffled in the autumn gusts, 
tread through the hard, dry stubble of an oatfield ; 
or, startled by the snap of the driver's whip, they 
stai'e a moment at the coach, then whir away down 
the cold cuiTent of the wind. The blue jays scream 



6o DREAM-LIFE, 

from the roadside oaks, and the last of the blue and 
purple asters shiver along the wall. And as the sun 
sinks, reddening all the western clouds to the color 
of the frosted maples, Hght lines of the Aurora gush 
up from the northern hills, and trail their splintered 
fingers far over the autumn sky. 

It is quite dark when you reach home, but you 
see the bright reflection of a fire within, and pres- 
ently at the open door Nelly clapping her hands for 
welcome. But there are sad faces when you enter. 
Your mother folds you to her heai't ; but at your 
first noisy outburst of joy puts her finger on her lijD, 
and whispers poor Charhe's name. The Doctor you 
see too, slipping softly out of the bedroom-door, 
with glasses in his hand ; and — you hardly know 
how — your spirits grow sad, and your heart gravi- 
tates to the heavy air of all about you. 

You cannot see Charlie, Nelly says ; — and you 
cannot in the quiet parlor tell Nelly a single one of 
the many things, which you had hoped to tell her. 
She says, — " Charlie has grown so thin and so pale, 
you would never know him." You listen to her, but 
you cannot talk : she asks you what you have seen, 
and you begin, for a moment joyously ; but when they 
open the door of the sick-room, and you hear a faint 
sigh, you cannot go on. You sit still, with your 
hand in Nelly's, and look thoughtfully into the blaze. 



A FRIEND MADE AND FRIEND LOST. 6i 

You drop to sleep after that day's fatigue, with 
singular and perplexed fancies haunting you ; and 
when you wake up with a shudder in the middle of 
the night, you have a fancy that Charlie is really 
dead : you dream of seeing him pale and thin, as 
Nelly described him, and with the starched grave- 
clothes on liim. You toss over in your bed, and 
grow hot and feverish. You cannot sleep; and 
you get u^D stealthily, and creep down-stairs. A 
Hght is bui-ning in the hall : the bedroom-door 
stands half open, and you listen — fancying you hear 
a whisper. You steal on through the hall, and edge 
around the side of the door. A little lamp is flicker- 
ing on the hearth, and the gaunt shadow of the bed- 
stead hes dark upon the ceiling. Your mother is in 
her chair with her head upon her hand — though it 
is long after midnight. The Doctor is standing 
with his back toward you, and with Charhe's little 
wrist in his fingers ; and you hear hard breathing, 
and now and then a low sigh from your mother's 
chair. 

An occasional gleam of firelight makes the gaunt 
shadows stagger on the wall, hke something spec- 
tral. You look wildly at them, and at the bed 
where your own brother — your laughing, gay- 
hearted brother — is lying. You long to see him, 
and sidle up softly a step or two ; but your mother's 



62 DREAM-LIFE. 

ear has caught the sound, and she beckons you to 
her, and folds you again in her embrace. You 
whisper to her what you wish. She rises, and takes 
you by the hand, to lead j^ou to the bedside. 

The Doctor looks very solemnly as we approach. 
He takes out his watch. He is not counting Char- 
lie's pulse, for he has dropped his hand, and it Hes 
carelessly, but oh, how thin ! over the edge of the 
bed. 

He shakes his head mournfully at your mother ; 
and she springs forward, dropping your hand, and 
lays her fingers upon the forehead of the boy, and 
passes her hand over his mouth. 

*' Is he asleep. Doctor ? " she says in a tone you 
do not know. 

"Be calm, madam." The Doctor is very calm. 
" I am calm," says your mother ; but you do not 
think it, for you see her tremble very plainly. 

"Dear madam, he will never waken in this 
world!" 

There is no cry, — only a bowing down of your 
mother's head upon the body of poor dead Charlie ! 
— and only when you see her form shake and quiver 
with the deep, smothered sobs, your crying bursts 
forth loud and strong. 

The Doctor lifts you in his arms, that you may 
see that pule head, — those blue eyes all sunken, — 



A FRIEND MADE AND FRIEND LOST. 63 

that flaxen hair gone, — those white lips pinched and 
hard: — Never, never will the boy forget his first 
terrible sight of Death ! 

In your silent chamber, after the storm of sobs 
has wearied you, the boy-dreams are strange and 
earnest. They take hold on that a-\vful Visitant, — 
that strange slipping away from life, of which we 
know so little, and yet know, alas, so much. Char- 
lie that was your brother, is now only a name : per- 
haps he is an angel ; perhaps (for the old nurse has 
said it when he was ugly — and now you hate her 
for it) he is with Satan. 

But you are sure this cannot be: you are sure 
that God, who made him suffer, would not now 
quicken and multiply his suffering. It agrees with 
your religion to think so ; and just now you want 
your religion to help you all it can. 

You toss in your bed, thinking over and over of 
that strange thing — Death ; and that perhaps it 
may overtake you before you are a man ; and you 
sob out those prayers (j^ou scarce know why) which 
ask God to keep life in you. You think the invol- 
untary fear, that makes your little prayer full of 
sobs, is a holy feehng; — and so it is a holy feeling, 
— the same feehng which makes a stricken child 
yearn for the embrace and the protection of a 
Parent. But you will find there are those canting 



64 DREAM-LIFE. 

ones trying to persuade you, at a later day, that 
it is a mere animal fear, and not to be cherished. 

You feel an access of goodness growing out of 
your boyish grief ; it seems as if youi' little brother 
in going to Heaven had opened a pathway thither, 
down which goodness comes streaming over your 
soul. 

You think how good a life you will lead ; and you 
map out great purposes, spreading themselves over 
the school-weeks of your remaining boyhood ; and 
you love your friends, or seem to, far more dearly 
than you ever loved them before ; and you forgive 
the boy who provoked you to that sad fall from the 
oak, and you forgive him all his wearisome teasings. 
But you cannot forgive yourseK for some harsh 
words that you have once spoken to Charhe ; still 
less can you forgive yourself for having once struck 
him in passion with your fist. You cannot forget 
his sobs then ; — if he were only ahve one httle 
instant to let you say, — " Charhe, will you forgive 
me?" 

Yourself you cannot forgive ; and sobbing over it, 
and murmuring " Dear Charlie ! " you droj) into a 
troubled sleep. 



Boy Religion. 

IS any weak soul frightened, that I should write of 
the Eehgion of the boy ? How indeed could I 
cover the field of his moral or intellectual growth, if 
I left unnoticed those dreams of futurity and of 
goodness, which come sometimes to his quieter 
moments, and oftener to his hours of vexation and 
trouble? It would be as wise to describe the 
season of Spring with no note of the silent influ- 
ences of that burning Day-god which is melting day 
by day the shattered ice-drifts of Winter, — which 
is fiUing every bud with succulence, and painting 
one flower with crimson, and another with white. 

I know there is a feeling — by much too general 
as it seems to me — that the subject may not be ap- 
proached except through the dicta of certain ecclesi- 
astic bodies, and that the language which touches it 
5 



66 DREAM-LIFE, 

must not be that every-day language which mirrors 
the vitahty of our thought, but should have some 
twist of that theologic mannerism, which is as cold 
to the boy as to the busy man of the world. 

I know very well that a great many good souls 
will call levity what I call honesty, and will abjure 
that familiar handling of the boy's Hen upon Eter- 
nity which my story wiU show. But I shall feel 
sm-e, that, in keeping true to Nature with word and 
with thought, I shall in no way offend against those 
highest truths to which all truthfulness is kindred. 

You have Christian teachers, who speak always 
reverently of the Bible ; you grow up in the hearing 
of daily prayers ; nay, you are perhaps taught to 
say them. 

Sometimes they have a meaning, and sometimes 
they have none. They have a meaning when your 
heart is troubled, when a grief or a wrong weighs 
upon you : then the keeping of the Father, which 
you implore, seems to come from the bottom of 
your soul ; and your eye suffuses with such tears of 
feehng as you count holy, and as you love to 
cherish in your memory. 

But they have no meaning when some trifling 
vexation angers you, and a distaste for all about you 
breeds a distaste for all above you. In the long 
hours of toilsome days Httle thought comes over 



BOY RELIGION, 67 

you of the morning prayer ; and only when evening 
deepens its shadows, and your boyish vexations 
fatigue you to thoughtfulness, do you dream of that 
coming and endless night, to which — they tell you 
— prayers soften the way. 

Sometimes upon a Summer Sunday, when you are 
wakeful upon your seat in church, with some strong- 
worded preacher who says things that half fright 
you, it occurs to you to consider how much goodness 
you are made of ; and whether there bB enough of 
it after all to carry you safely away from the clutch 
of Evil ? And straightway you reckon up those 
friendships where your heart lies ; you know you 
are a true and honest fiiend to Frank ; and you love 
your mother, and your father ; as for Nelly, Heaven 
knows, you could not conti'ive a way to love her 
better than you do. 

You dare not take much credit to yourself for the 
love of Httle Madge, — partly because you have 
sometimes caught yourself trying — not to love 
her ; and partly because the black-eyed Jenny 
comes in the way. Yet you can find no command 
in the Catechism to love one girl to the exclusion of 
all other girls. It is somewhat doubtful if you ever 
do find it. But as for loving some half-dozen you 
could name, whose images drift through your 
thought, in dirty, salmon-colored frocks, and 



68 DREAM-LIFE. 

slovenly shoes, it is quite impossible ; and suddenly 
this thought, coupled with a lingering remembrance 
of the pea-green pantaloons, utterly breaks down 
your hopes. 

Yet — you muse again, — there are plenty of good 
people, as the times go, who have their dislikes, 
and who speak them too. Even the sharp-talking 
clergyman you have heard say some very sour things 
about his landlord, who raised his rent the last year. 
And you know that he did not talk as mildly as he 
does in the church, when he found Frank and your- 
self quietly filching a few of his peaches through the 
orchard fence. 

But your clergyman will say perhaps, with what 
seems to you quite unnecessary coldness, that 
goodness is not to be reckoned in your chances of 
safety ; that there is a Higher Goodness, whose 
merit is All-Sufficient. This puzzles you sadly ; nor 
will you escape the puzzle, until, in the presence of 
the Home altar, which seems to guard you, as the 
Lares guarded Eoman children, you/eeZ — you can- 
not tell how — that good actions must spring from 
good som'ces ; and that those soiurces must lie in 
that Heaven toward which your boyish spirit yearns, 
as you kneel at your mother's side. 

Conscience too is all the while approving you for 
deeds well done ; and — wicked as you fear the 



BOY RELIGION, 69 

preacher might judge it — you cannot but found on 
those deeds a hope that your prayer at night flows 
more easily, more freely, and more holily toward 
"Our Father in Heaven." Nor indeed later in life 
— whatever may be the ill-advised expressions of 
human teachers — will you ever find that Duty 
performed, and generous endeavor will stand one 
whit in the way either of Faith or of Love. Striv- 
ing to be good is a very direct road toward Good- 
ness ; and if Hfe be so tempered by high motive as 
to make actions always good. Faith is unconsciously 
won. 

Another notion that disturbs you very much, is 
your positive dislike of long sermons, and of such 
singing as they have when the organist is away. 
You cannot understand the force of that verse of 
Dr. Watts which hkens heaven to a never-ending 
Sabbath ; you do hope — though it seems a half 

wicked hope — that old Dr. will not be the 

preacher. You think that your heart in its best 
moments craves for something more lovable. You 
suggest this perhaps to some Sunday teacher, who 
only shakes his head sourly, and tells you it is a 
thought that the Devil is putting in youi* brain. It 
strikes you oddly that the Devil should be using a 
verse of Dr. Watts to puzzle you ! But if it be so, 
he keeps it sticking by your thought very perti- 



70 DREAM-LIFE. 

naciously, until some simple utterance of your 
mother about the Love that reigns in the other 
world seems on a sudden to widen Heaven, and to 
waft away your doubts like a cloud. 

It excites your v/onder not a little to find people, 
who talk gravely and heartily of the excellence of 
sermons and of chui*ch-going, sometimes faU asleep 
under it all. And you wonder — if they really like 
preaching so well — why they do not buy some of 
the minister's old manuscripts, and read them over 
on week-days, or invite the clergyman to preach to 
them in a quiet way in jprivate. 

Ah, Clarence, you do not yet know the poor 

weakness of even maturest manhood, and the feeble 
gropings of the soul toward a soul's paa^adise in the 
best of the world. You do not yet know either, 
that ignorance and fear will be thrusting their un- 
truth and false show into the very essentials of 
Beligion. 

Again you wonder, if the clergymen are all such 
veiy good men as you are taught to believe, why it 
is that every little while people will be trying to 
send them off, and very anxious to prove that, 
instead of being so good, they are in fact very 
stupid and bad men. At that day you have no clear 
conceptions of the distinction between stupidity and 
vice, and think that a good man must necessarily 



BOY RELIGION. 71 

say very eloquent things. You will find youi'self 
sadly mistaken on this point, before you get on very 
far in life. 

Heaven, when your mother peoples it with friends 
gone, and Kttle Charlie, and that better Friend who, 
she says, took CharUe in his arms, and is now his 
Father above the skies, seems a place to be loved 
and longed for. But to think that jNIr. Such-an-one, 
who is only good on Sundays, will be there too, — 
and to think of his talking as he does of a place 
which you are sure he would spoil if he were there, 
— puzzles you again ; and you relapse into wonder, 
doubt, and yearning. 

And there, Clarence, for the present, I shall 

leave you. A wide, rich heaven hangs above you, 
but it hangs very high : a wide, rough world is 
around you, and it lies veiy low. 

I am assuming in these sketches no office of a 
teacher. I am seeking only to make a truthful 
analysis of the boyish thought and feehng. But 
having ventured thus far into what may seem sacred 
ground, I shall venture still farther, and clinch my 
matter with a moral. 

There is very much religious teaching, even in so 
good a country as New England, which is far too 
harsh, too diy, too cold for the heart of a boy. 
Long sermons, doctrinal precepts, and such tedi- 



72 DREAM-LIFE. 

ously worded dogmas as were uttered by those 
honest but hard-spoken men, the Westminster 
Divines, fatigue, and puzzle, and dispirit him. 

They may be well enough for those strong souls 
which strengthen by task- work, or for those mature 
people whose iron habit of self-denial has made 
patience a cardinal virtue ; but they fall (experto 
crede) upon the unfledged faculties of the boy hke a 
winter's rain upon spring flowers, — Hke hammers of 
iron upon hthe timber. They may make deep im- 
pression upon his moral nature, but there is great 
danger of a sad rebound. 

Is it absurd to suppose that some adaptation is 
desirable ? And might not the teachings of that 
Religion, wliich is the segis of our moral being, be 
inwrought with some of those finer harmonies of 
speech and form which were given to wise ends, — 
and lure the boyish soul by something akin to that 
gentleness which belonged to the Nazarene Teacher, 
and which provided not only meat for men, but 
" milk for babes " ? 



VL 

A New-England Squire. 

FRANK has a grandfather Hving in the country, a 
good specimen of the old-fashioned New-Eng- 
land farmer. And — go where one will, the world 
over — I know of no race of men who, taken as a 
whole, possess more integrit}', more intelligence, and 
more of those elements of comfort which go to make 
a home beloved and the social basis firm, than the 
New-England farmers. 

They are not briUiant, nor are they highly refined ; 
they know nothing of arts, histrionic or dramatic ; 
they know only so much of older nations as their 
histories and newspapers teach them ; in the fashion- 
able world they hold no place ; — but in energy, in 
industry, in hardy virtue, in substantial knowledge, 
and in manly independence, they make up a race 
that is hard to be matched. 



74 DREAM-LIFE, 

The French peasantry are, in all the essentials of 
intelligence and sterling worth, infants compared 
with them ; and the farmers of England are either 
the merest jockeys in grain, with few ideas beyond 
their sacks, samples, and mai'ket-days, — or, with 
added cultivation, they lose their independence in 
a subserviency to some neighbor patron of rank ; 
and superior intelligence teaches them no lesson so 
quickly as that their brethren of the glebe are une- 
qual to them, and are to be left to their cattle and 
the goad. 

There are English farmers indeed, who are men 
in earnest, who read the papers, and who keep the 
current of the year's intelligence ; but such men are 
the exceptions. Li New-England, with the school 
upon every third hillside, and the self-regulating, 
free-acting church to watch every valley with week- 
day quiet, and to wake every valley with Sabbath 
sound, the men become, as a class, bold, intelligent, 
and honest actors, who would make again, as they 
have made before, a terrible army of defence, — and 
who would find reasons for their actions as strong as 
their armies. 

Fi-ank's grandfather has silver hair, but is still hale, 
erect, and strong. His dress is homely but neat. 
Being a thorough-going Protectionist, he has no fancy 
for the gewgaws of foreign importation, and makes 



A NEW-ENGLAND SQUIRE, 75 

it a point to appear always in the village church, 
and on all gi'eat occasions, in a sober suit of home- 
spun. He has no pride of appearance, and he needs 
none. He is known as the Squire throughout the 
township ; and no important measure can pass the 
board of selectmen without the Squire's approval ; — 
and this from no blind subserviency to his opinion, 
— because his farm is large, and he is reckoned 
"forehanded," — but because there is a confidence 
in his judgment. 

He is jealous of none of the prerogatives of the 
country parson, or of the schoolmaster, or of the 
village doctor ; and although the latter is a testy poli- 
tician of the opposite party, it does not at all impair 
the Squire's faith in his calomel ; he suffers all his 
Eadicalism with the same equanimity with which he 
suffers his rhubarb. 

The day-laborers of the neighborhood, and the 
small farmers, consider the Squire's note-of-hand for 
their savings better than the best bonds of city 
origin ; and they seek his advice in all matters of 
litigation. He is a Justice of the Peace, as the title 
of Squire in a New-England village implies ; and 
many are the sessions of the country courts that you 
peep upon with Frank, from the door of the great 
dining-room. 

The defendant always seems to you in these im- 



76 DREAM-LIFE. 

portant cases — especially if his beard is rather long 
— an extraordinary ruffian, in comparison with 
whom Jack Sheppard would have been an innocent 
boy. You watch curiously the old gentleman sitting 
in his big arm-chair, with his spectacles in their sil- 
ver case at his elbow, and his snuff-box in hand, 
listening attentively to some grievous complaint ; 
you see him ponder deeply, — with a pinch of snuff 
to aid his judgment, — and you listen with intense 
admu'ation as he gives a loud preparatory "Ahem ! " 
and clears away the intricacies of the case with a 
sweep of that strong practical sense which distin- 
guishes the New-England farmer, — getting at the 
very hinge of the matter, without any consciousness 
of Lis own precision, and satisfying the defendant 
by the clearness of his talk as much as by the 
leniency of his judgment. 

His lands lie along those swelling hills, which in 
southern New-England carry the chain of the White 
and Green Mountains in gentle undulations to the 
borders of the sea. He farms some fifteen hundred 
acres, — " suitably divided," as the old-school agri- 
culturists say, into " woodland, pasture, and tillage." 
The farm-house — a large, irregularly built mansion 
of wood — stands upon a shelf of the hills looking 
southward, and is shaded by century-old oaks. The 
barns and outbuildings are grouped in a brown 



A NEW-ENGLAND SQUIRE. 77 

j^halanx a little to the northward of the dwelling. 
Between them a high timber gate opens upon the 
scattered pasture-lands of the hills ; opposite to this 
and across the farmyard, which is the lounging-place 
of scores of red-necked turkeys and of matronly hens, 
clucking to their callow brood, another gate of sim- 
ilar pretensions ojDens upon the wide meadow-land, 
which rolls with a heavy " ground-swell " along the 
valley of a mountain river. A veteran oak stands 
sentinel at the brown meadow-gate, its trunk all 
scarred with the ruthless cuts of new-ground 
axes, and the limbs garnished in summer-time 
with the crooked snathes of murderous-looking 
scythes. 

The high-road passes a stone's-throw away ; but 
there is Httle " travel " to be seen ; and every 
chance passer mil inevitably come under the range 
of the kitchen windows, and be studied carefully by 
the eyes of the stout dairy-maid, — to say nothing 
of the stalwart Indian cook. 

This last you cannot but admire as a type of that 
picturesque race, among whom your boyish fancy 
has woven so many stories of romance. You won- 
der how she must regard the white interlopers upon 
her own soil ; and you think that she tolerates the 
Squire's farming privileges with more modesty than 
you would suppose. You learn however that she 



78 DREAM-LIFE. 

pays very little regard to white rights — when they 
conflict with her own ; and further learn, to your 
deep regret, that your Princess of the old tribe is 
sadly addicted to cider-drinking ; and having heard 
her once or twice with a very indistinct " Goo-er 
night, Sq-quare " upon her lips, your dreams about 
her grow very tame. 

The Squire, like all veiy sensible men, has his 
hobbies and peculiarities. He has a great con- 
tempt, for instance, for all paper monej^ and imag- 
ines banks to be corporate societies skilfully con- 
trived for the legal plunder of the community. He 
keeps a supply of silver and gold by him in the foot 
of an old stocking, and seems to have great confi- 
dence in the value of Spanish milled dollars. He 
has no kind of patience with the new doctrines of 
farming. Liebig, and all the rest, he sets down as 
mere theorists, and has far more respect for the 
contents of his barnyard than for all the guano de- 
posits in the world. Scientific farming, and gentle- 
man farming, may do very well, he says, " to keep 
idle young fellows from the city out of mischief ; 
but as for real, effective management, there's noth- 
ing like the old stock of men, who ran barefoot 
until they were ten, and who count the hard win- 
ters by their frozen toes." And he is fond of quot- 
ing in this connection — the only quotation, by the 



A NEW-ENGLAND SQUIRE. 79 

by, that the old gentleman ever makes — that coup- 
let of " Poor Richard,"— 

"He, that by the plough would thrive, 
Himself must either hold or drive." 

The Squire has been in his day connected more 
or less intimately with turnpike enterprises, which 
the railroads of the day have thrown sadly into the 
background ; and he reflects often in a melancholy 
way upon the good old times when a man could 
travel in his own carriage quietly across the coim- 
ivj, without being frightened with the clatter of an 
engine, and when turn^Dike stock paid wholesome 
yearly dividends of six per cent. 

An almost constant hanger-on about the premises, 
and a great favorite with the Squire, is a stout, 
middle-aged man, with a heavy-bearded face, to 
whom Frank introduces you as " Captain Dick ; '* 
and he tells you moreover that he is a better 
butcher, a better wall-layer, and cuts a broader 
" swathe, " than any man upon the farm. Beside 
all which he has an immense deal of information. 
He knows in the Spring where all the crows'-nests 
are to be found ; he tells Frank where the foxes 
burrow ; he has even shot two or three raccoons in 
the swamps ; he knows the best season to troll for 
pickerel ; he has a thorough understanding of bee- 



8o DREAM-LIFE. 

hunting ; he can tell the ownership of every stray 
heifer that appears upon the road : indeed scarce an 
inquiry is made, or an opinion formed, on any of 
these subjects, or on such kindred ones as the 
weather, or potato crop, without previous consulta- 
tion with " Captain Dick," 

You have an extraordinary respect for Captain 
Dick : his gruff tones, dark beard, patched waist- 
coat, and cow-hide boots, only add to it : you can 
compare your regard for him only with the senti- 
ments you entertain for those fabulous Roman 
heroes, led on by Horatius, who cut down the 
bridge across the Tiber, and then swam over to 
their wives and families. 

A superannuated old greyhound lives about the 
premises, and stalks lazily around, thrusting his 
thin nose into your hands in a very affectionate 
manner. 

Of course, in your way, you are a lion among the 
boys of the neighborhood : a blue jacket that you 
wear, with bell buttons of white metal, is their es- 
pecial wonderment. You astonish them moreover 
with your stories of various parts of the world 
which they have never visited. They tell you of the 
haunts of rabbits, and great snake stories, as you sit 
in the dusk after supper under the old oaks ; and 
you delight them in turn with some marvellous tale 



A NEW-ENGLAND SQUIRE. 8i 

of South-American reptiles out of Peter Parley's 
books. 

In all this your new friends are men of observa- 
tion ; while Frank and yourself are comparatively 
men of reading. In ciphering, and all schooling, 
you find yourself a long way before them ; and you 
tallc of problems, and foreign seas, and Latin de- 
clensions, in a way that sets them all agape. 

As for the little country girls, their bare legs 
rather stagger your notions of propriety ; nor can 
you wholly get over their out-of-the-way pronuncia- 
tion of some of the vowels. Frank however has a 
little cousin, — a toddling, wee thing, some seven 
years your junior, who has a rich eye for an infant. 
But, alas, its color means nothing ; poor Fanny is 
stone-blind. Your pity leans toward her strangely, 
as she feels her way about the old parlor ; and her 
dark eyes wander over the wainscot, or over the 
clear, blue sky, with the same sad, painful vacancy. 

And yet — it is very strange, — she does not 
grieve : there is a sweet, soft smile upon her Hp, — 
a smile, that will come to you in your fancied trou- 
bles of after-life with a deep voice of reproach. 

Altogether you grow into a liking of the country : 
your boyish spirit loves its fresh, bracing air, and 
the sparkles of dew that at sunrise cover the hills 
with diamonds ; and the wild river, with its black- 



82 DREAM-LIFE. 

topped, loitering pools ; and the shaggy mists that 
lie in the nights of early autumn like unravelled 
clouds, lost upon the meadow. You love the hills, 
climbing green and grand to the skies, or stretching 
away in distance their soft, blue, smoky caps, like 
the sweet, half-faded memories of the years be- 
hind you. You love those oaks, tossing up their 
broad arms into the clear heaven with a spirit and a 
strength that kindles your dawning pride and pur- 
poses, and that makes you yearn, as your forehead 
mantles with fresh blood, for a kindi-ed spirit and 
a kindred strength. Above all you love — though 
you do not know it now — the BEEiVDTH of a country 
life. In the fields of God's planting there is Koom. 
No walls of brick and mortar cramp one ; no facti- 
tious distinctions mould j^our habit. The involun- 
tary reaches of the spirit tend toward the True and 
the Natural. The flowers, the clouds, and the fresh- 
smelHng earth, all give width to your intent. The 
boy grows into manliness, instead of growing to be 
like men. He claims — with yearnings of brother- 
hood — his kinship with Nature ; and he feels in the 
mountains his heirship to the Father of Nature. 

This delirium of feehng may not find expression 
upon the lip of the boy ; but yet it underUes his 
thought, and will without his consciousness give the 
spring to his musing dreams. 



A NEW-ENGLAND SQUIRE, 83 

So it is, that, as you lie tliere upon the 

sunny greensward, at the old Squii-e's door, you 
muse upon the time when some high-lying land, 
with huge granaries, and cosy old mansion sleeping 
under the trees, shall be yours, — when the brooks 
shall water your meadows, and come laughing down 
your pasture-lands, — when the clouds shall shed 
their spring fragrance upon your lawns, and the 
daisies bless your paths. 

You will then be a Squire, with your cane, your 
lean-hmbed hound, yoiu* stocking-leg of specie, and 
your snuffbox. You will be the happy and re- 
spected husband of some tidy old lady in black, and 
spectacles, — a little phthisicky, hke Frank's grand- 
mother, — and an accomplished cook of stewed 
pears and Johnny-cakes. 

It seems a very lofty ambition at this stage of 
growth to reach such eminence, as to convert your 
drawer in the wainscot, that has a secret spring, into 
a bank for the country people ; and the power to 
send a man to jail seems one of those stretches of 
human prerogative to which few of your fellow-mor- 
tals can ever hope to attain. 

Well, it may all be. And who knows but 

the Dreams of Age, when they are reached, will be 
lighted by the same spiiit and freedom of natm-e 
that is around you now? Who knows, but that 



84 DREAM-LIFE. 

after tracking you through the Spring and the Sum- 
mer of Youth, we shall find frosted Age settling 
upon you heavily and solemnly in the very fields 
where you wanton to-day ? 

This American Hfe of ours is full of tortuous and 
shifting impulses. It brings Age back from years 
of wandering to totter in the hamlet of its birth ; 
and it scatters armies of ripe manhood to bleach far- 
away shores with their bones. 

That Providence, whose eye and hand are the spy 
and the executioner of the Fateful changes of our 
life, may bring you back in Manhood, or in Age, to 
this mountain home of New England ; and that very 
willow yonder, which your fancy now makes the 
graceful mourner of your leave, may one day 
shadow mournfully your grave. 



vn 

The Country Church, 

THE country cliurcli is a square old building of 
wood without paint or decoration, and of that 
genuine Puritanic stamp which is now fast giving 
way to Greek porticos and to cockney towers. It 
stands upon a hill, with a little churchyard in its 
rear, where one or two sickly-looking trees keep 
watch and ward over the vagrant sheep that graze 
among the gTaves. Bramble-bushes seem to thrive 
on the bodies below, and there is no flower in the 
graveyard, save a few golden-rods, which flaunt 
their gaudy inodorous color under the lee of the 
northern wall. 

New England country-livers have as yet been very 
little inoculated with the sentiment of beauty ; even 
the door-step to the church is a wide flat stone, that 
shows not a single stroke of the hammer. Within, 



S6 DREAM-LIFE, 

the simplicity is even more severe. Browii galleries 
run around three sides of the old building, sup- 
ported by timbers, on v^^hich you still trace, under 
the stains from the leaky roof, the deep scoring of 
the woodman's axe. 

Below, the unpainted pews are ranged in square 
forms, and by age have gained the color of those 
fragmentary wrecks of cigar-boxes which you see 
upon the top shelves in the bar-rooms of country 
taverns. The minister's desk is lofty, and has once 
been honored with a coating of paint ; — as well as 
the huge sounding-board, which to your great 
amazement protrudes from the wall at a very dan- 
gerous angle of inchnation over the speaker's head. 
As the Squire's pew is in the place of honor to the 
right of the pulpit, you have a little tremor yourself 
at sight of the heavy sounding-board, and cannot 
forbear indulging in a quiet feeling of relief when 
the last prayer is said. 

There are in the Squire's pew long, faded, crim- 
son cushions, which it seems to you, must date back 
nearly to the commencement of the Christian era in 
this country. There are also sundry old thumb- 
worn copies of Dr. Dwight's Version of the Psalms 
of David, — "appointed to be sung in churches by 
authority of the General Association of the State of 
Connecticut." The sides of Dr. Dwight's Version 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 87 

are, you observe, sadly wai-ped and weather-stained ; 
and from some stray figures which appear upon a 
fly-leaf j^ou are constrained to think, that the Squire 
lias sometimes employed a quiet interval of the ser- 
vice with reckoning up the contents of the old 
stocking-leg at home. 

The parson is a stout man, remarkable in your 
opinion chiefly for a yellowish-brown wig, a strong 
nasal tone, and occasional violent thumps upon the 
little, dingy, red velvet cushion, studded with brass 
tacks, at the top of the desk. You do not altogether 
admire his style ; and by the time he has entered 
upon his "Fourthly," you give your attention in 
despair to a new reading (it must be the twentieth) 
of the preface to Dr. D wight's Version of the 
Psalms. 

The singing has a charm for you. There is a 
long, thin-faced, flax-haired man, who carries a tun- 
ing-fork in his waistcoat-pocket, and who leads the 
choir. His position is in the very front rank of 
gallery benches facing the desk ; and by the time 
the old clergyman has read two verses of the psalm, 
the country chorister turns around to his little 
group of aids — consisting of the blacksmith, a car- 
rot^^-headed schoolmaster, two women in snuff- 
colored silks, and a girl in pink bonnet — to an- 
nounce the tune. 



88 DREAM-LIFE. 

This being done in an authoritative manner, he 
lifts his long music-book — glances again at his little 
company, — clears his throat by a powerful ahem, 
followed by a powerful use of a bandanna pocket- 
handkerchief, — draws out his tuning-fork, and waits 
for the parson to close his reading. He now reviews 
once more his company, — throws a reproving glance 
at the young woman in the pink hat, who at the 
moment is biting off a stout bunch of fennel, — lifts 
his music-book, — thumps upon the rail with his 
fork, — listens keenly, — gives a slight ahem, — falls 
into the cadence, — swells into a strong crescendo, — • 
catches at the first word of the line as if he were 
afraid it might get away, — turns to his company, — 
lifts his music-book with spirit, gives it a powerful 
slap with the disengaged hand, and with a majestic 
toss of the head soars away, with half the women be- 
low straggling on in his wake, into some such brave 
old melody as — Litchfield. 

Being a visitor, and in the Squire's pew, you are 
naturally an object of considerable attention to the 
girls about your age, as well as to a great many fat 
old ladies in iron spectacles, who mortify you exces- 
sively by patting you under the chin after church ; 
and insist upon mistaking you for Frank ; and force 
upon you very dry cookies spiced with caraway 
seeds. 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH, 89 

You keep somewhat shy of the young ladies, as 
they are rather stout for your notions of beauty, 
and wear thick calf-skin boots. They compare very 
poorly with Jenny. Jenny, you think, would be 
above eating gingerbread between services. None 
of them, you imagine, ever read " Thaddeus of War- 
saw," or ever used a colored glass seal with a Cupid 
and a dart upon it. You are quite certain they 
never did, or they could not surely wear such dowdy 
gowns, and suck their thumbs as they do. 

The farmers you have a high respect for, — par- 
ticularly for one ruddy-faced old gentleman in a 
brown surtout, who brings his whip into church 
with him, who sings in a veiy strong voice, and who 
drives a span of gray colts. You think, however, 
that he has got rather a stout wife ; and from the 
way he humors her in stopping to talk with two or 
three other fat women, before setting off for home, 
(though he seems a little fidgety,) you naively think 
that he has a high regard for her opinion. Another 
townsman who attracts your notice is a stout old 
deacon, who, before entering, always steps around 
the corner of the church, and puts his hat upon the 
gi'ound, to adjust his wig in a quiet way. He then 
marches up the broad aisle in a stately manner, and 
plants his hat and a big pair of buckskin mittens on 
the little table imder the desk. When he is fairly 



90 DREAM-LIFE, 

seated in liis comer of the pew, with his elbow upon 
the top rail, — almost the only man who can com- 
fortably reach it, — you observe that he spreads his 
Ijrawny fingers over his scalp in an exceedingly cau- 
tious manner ; and you innocently think again that 
it is very hypocritical in a deacon to be pretending 
to lean upon his hand when he is only keeping his 
wig straight. 

After the morning service they have an " hour's 
intermission," as the preacher calls it ; during which 
the old men gather on a sunny side of the building, 
and after shaking hands all around, and asking after 
the " folks " at home, they enjoy a quiet talk about 
the crops. One man, for instance, with a twist in 
his nose, would say, "It's raether a growin' season;" 
and another would reply, "Tolerable, but potatoes 
is feelin' the wet badly." The stout deacon approves 
this opinion, and confirms it by blowing his nose 
very powerfully. 

Two or three of the more worldly-minded ones 
will perhaps stroll over to a neighbor's barn-yard, 
and take a look at his young stock, and talk of 
prices, and whittle a little ; and very likely some 
two of them will make a conditional " swop " of 
" three likely ye'rhngs " for a pair of " two-year- 
olds." 

The youngsters are fond of getting out into the 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 91 

graveyard, and comparing jackknives, or talking 
about the schoolmaster or the menagerie, or, it may 
be, of some prospective " travel " in the fall, — either 
to town, or perhaps to the "sea-shore." 

Afternoon service hangs heavily ; and the tall 
chorister is by no means so blithe, or so majestic in 
the toss of his head, as in the morning. A boy in 
the next box tries to provoke you into familiarity 
by dropping pellets of gingerbread through the bars 
of the pew ; but as you are not accustomed to that 
way of making acquaintance, you decline all his over- 
tures. 

After the service is finished, the wagons, that have 
been disposed on either side of the road, are drawn 
uj) before the door. The old Squire meantime is 
sure to have a little chat with the parson before he 
leaves ; in the course of which the parson takes oc- 
casion to say that his wife is a little ailing, — "a 
shght touch," he thinks, " of the rheumatiz." One 
of the children too has been troubled with the " sum- 
mer complaint " for a day or two ; but he thinks that 
a dose of catnip, under Providence, will effect a cure. 
The younger and unmarried men, with red wagons 
flaming upon bright yellow wheels, make great ef- 
forts to drive off in the van ; and they spin fright- 
fully near some of the fat, sour-faced women, who 
remark in a quiet, but not very Christian tone, that 



92 DREAM-LIFE. 

they " fear the elder's sermon hasn't done the young 
bucks much good." It is much to be feared in truth 
that it has not. 

In ten minutes the old church is thoroughly de- 
serted ; the neighbor who keeps the key has locked 
up for another week the creaking door ; and nothing 
of the service remains within, except — Dr. D wight's 
Version, — the long music-books, — crumbs of gin- 
gerbread, and refuse stalks of despoiled fennel. 

And yet under the influence of that old, weather- 
stained temple are perhaps growing up — though 
you do not once fancy it — souls possessed of an en- 
ergy, an industry, and a respect for virtue, which will 
make them stronger for the real work of life than all 
the elegant children of a city. One lesson, which 
even the rudest churches of New England teach, — 
with all their harshness, and all their repulsive se- 
verity of form, — is the lesson of Self-Denial. Once 
armed with that, and manhood is strong. The soul 
that possesses the consciousness of mastering pas- 
sion, is endowed with an element of force that can 
never harmonize with defeat. Difficulties it wears 
like a summer garment, and flings away at the first 
approach of the winter of Need. 

Let not any one suppose, then, that in this detail 
of the country life through which oui* hero is led, I 
would cast obloquy or a sneer upon its simplicity, or 



THE COUNTRY CHURCH. 93 

upon its lack of refinement. Goodness and strength 
in this world are quite as apt to wear rough coats as 
fine ones. And the words of thorough and self-sac- 
rificing kindness are far more often dressed in the 
uncouth sounds of retired life than in the polished 
utterance of the town. Heaven has not made warm 
hearts and honest hearts distinguishable by the qual- 
ity of the covering. True diamonds need no work of 
the artificer to reflect and multiply their rays. 
Goodness is more within than without ; and purity 
is of nearer kin to the soul than to the body. 

And, Clarence, it may well happen that later 

in life — under the gorgeous ceilings of Venetian 
churches, or at some splendid mass in Notre-Dame, 
with embroidered coats and costly silks around you 
— your thoughts will run back to that little storm- 
beaten church, and to the willow waving in its yard^ 
with a Hope that glows, and with a tear that you 
embalm. 



vm. 

A Home Scene» 

AND now I shall not leave this realm of boyhood, 
or suffer my hero to slip away from this gala- 
time of his Hfe, without a fair look at that Home 
•where his present pleasures lie, and where all his 
dreams begin and end. 

Little does the boy know, as the tide of years 
drifts by, floating him out insensibly from the har- 
bor of his home upon the great sea of life, — what 
joys, what opportunities, what affections, are slip- 
ping from him into the shades of that inexorable 
Past, where no man can go save on the kindly wings 
of remembrance. Little does he think — and God 
be praised that the thought does not sink deep lines 
in his young forehead, — as he leans upon the lap of 
his mother, with his e^^e turned to her in some ear- 
nest pleading for a fancied pleasure of the hour, or 



A HOME SCENE, 95 

in some important story of his griefs, that such shar- 
ing of his sorrows, and such sympathy with his 
wishes, he will find nowhere in the world again. 

Little does he imagine that the fond Nelly, ever 
thoughtful of his pleasure, ever smiling away his 
giiefs, will soon be beyond the reach of either, and 
that the waves of the years, which come rocking so 
gently under him, will soon toss her far away upon 
the great swell of life. 

But noio you are there. The firelight glimmers 
upon the walls of your cherished home, like the 
Vestal fire of old upon the figures of adoring vu- 
gins, or Hke the flame of Hebrew sacrifice, whose 
incense bore hearts to Heaven. The big chair of 
your father is drawn to its wonted corner by the 
chimney-side ; his head, just touched with gray, lies 
back upon its oaken top. Little Nelly leans upon 
his knee, looking up for some reply to her girhsh 
questionings. Opposite sits your mother : her fig- 
ure is thin, her look cheerful, yet subdued ; her arm 
perhaps resting on your shoulder, as she talks to 
you in tones of tender admonition of the days that 
are to come. 

The cat is purring on the hearth ; the clock, that 
ticked so plainly when CharHe died, is ticking on 
the mantel still. The great table in the middle of 
the room with its books and work waits only fur the 



96 DREAM-LIFE, 

lighting of the evening lamp, to see a return of the 
family circle to its stores of embroidery, and of story. 

Upon a little stand under the mirror, which 
catches now and then a flicker of the firelight, and 
makes it play wantonly over the ceiling, hes that 
big book reverenced of your New-England parents, 
— the Family Bible. It is a ponderous square 
volume, with heavy silver clasps that you have often 
pressed open for a look at its quaint pictures, or for 
a study of those prettily bordered pages which lie 
between the Testaments, and which hold the Family 
Eecord. 

There are the Births, — your father's and your 
mother's ; it seems as if they were born long ages 
ago ; and even your own date of birth appears an al- 
most incredible distance back. Then there are the 
Marriages, — only one as yet; and your mother's 
maiden name looks oddly to you : it is hard to think 
of her as having borne any other name than the one 
you know so weU ; hard to think of her as having 
once been a young girl with her school satchel and 
her mischievous pranks. You wonder if your name 
will ever come under that paging ; and wonder, 
though you scarce whisper the w^onder to yourself, 
how another name would look, just below j^ours, — 
such a name, for instance, as Famiy, or as Miss Mai'- 
garet Boyne ? 



A HOME SCENE, 97 

Last of all come the Deaths, — only one. Poor 
Charlie! — "Died 12 September 18— Charles 
Henry, aged four years." You know just how it 
looks. You have turned to it often ; there you 
seem to be joined to him, though only by the 
tmTiing of a leaf. And over your thoughts, as you 
look at that page of the record, there sometimes 
wanders a vague shadowy fear, which vMl come, 
— that your own name may soon be there. You 
try to drop the notion, as if it were not fairly 
3"our own ; you affect to slight it, as you would 
slight a boy who presumed on your acquaintance, 
but whom you have no desire to know. It is a 
common thing, you will find, in our work-a-day 
world to decline familiarity with those ideas that 
fright us. 

Yet your mother — how strange it is — has no 
fears of such fore-castings of the end. Even now as 
you stand beside her, and as the twihght deepens 
in the room, her low, silvery voice is stealing upon 
your ear, telling you that she cannot be long with 
you ; that the time is coming when you must be 
guided by your own judgment, and struggle with 
the world unaided by the friends of your boyhood. 
There is a little pride, and a great deal more of 
anxiety, in your thoughts now, as you look stead- 
fastly into the home blaze, while those dehcate 
7 



98 DREAM-LIFE. 

fingers, so tender of your happiness, play with the 
locks upon your brow. 

' To struggle with the world,' — that is a 

proud thing ; to struggle alone, — there Hes the 
dread. Then crowds in swift upon the calm of 
boyhood the first anxious thought of youth ; then 
chases over the sky of Spring the first heated and 
wrathful cloud of Summer. 

But the lamps are now lit in the little parlor, and 
they shed a soft haze to the farthest corner of the 
room ; while the firelight streams over the floor, 
where puss lies purring. Little Madge is there ; 
she has dropped in softly with her mother, and 
Nelly has welcomed her with a bound and with a 
kiss. Jenny has not so rosy a cheek as Madge. 
But Jenny with her love-notes, and her languishing 
dark eye, you think of as a lady ; and the thought 
of her is a constant drain upon your sentiment. As 
for Madge, — that girl Madge, whom you know so 
well, — you think of her as a sister ; and yet — it 
it is very odd — you look at her far of tener than 
you do at Nelly. 

Frank too has come in to have a game with you 
at draughts ; and he is in capital spirits, all brisk 
and glowing with liis evening's walk. He — bless 
his honest heart ! — never observes that you arrange 
the board very adroitly, so that you may keep half 



A HOME SCENE. 99 

an eye upon Madge, as she sits yonder beside 
NeUy. 

Nor does he once notice your blush as you catch 
her eye when she raises her head to fling back the 
ringlets, and with a sly look at you, bends a 
most earnest gaze upon the board, as if she were 
especially interested in the disposition of the men. 

You catch a little of the spint of coquetry your- 
self, — (what a native growth it is !) — and if she 
lift her eyes when you are gazing at her, you very 
suddenly divert your look to the cat at her feet, and 
remark to youi' friend Frank in an easy off-hand 
way — 'how still the cat is lying.' 

And Frank turns — thinking probably, if he 
tliinks at all about it, that cats are very apt to lie 
still when they sleep. 

As for Nelly, half neglected by your thought as 
well as by your eye, while mischievous-looking Madge 
is sitting by her, you Httle know as yet what kind- 
ness, what gentleness, you are careless of. Few loves 
in hfe, — and you will learn it before life is done, — 
can make good the lost love of a sister. 

As for your parents, in the intervals of the game 
you hsten di-eamily to their talk wdth the mother of 
Madge, — good Mi's. Boyne. It floats over your mind, 
as you rest your chin upon your clenched hand, like 
a strain of old famihar music, — a household strain 



loo DREAM-LIFE. 

that seems to belong to the habit of your ear, — a 
strain that will linger about it melodiously for many 
years to come, — a strain that will be recalled long 
time hence, when hfe is earnest and its cares heavy, 
with sighs of regret and yet with tenderest of mem- 
ories. 

By-and-by your game is done ; and other games, 
in which join Nelly (she is dead long ago !) and 
Madge, (can she be Hving ?) stretch out that sweet 
eventide of Home, until the lamp flickers, and you 
tell them all — Good-Night ! To Madge, it is said 
boldly, — a boldness put on to conceal a little Im-k- 
ing tremor ; but there is no tremor in the home 
greeting. 

Aye, my boy, kiss your mother, — kiss her 

again ; fondle your sweet Nelly ; pass your little 
hand through the gray locks of your father ; love 
them while you can. Make your good-nights lin- 
ger and make your adieu long, and fond, and often 
repeated. Love with your whole soul, — Father, 
Mother, and Sister, — for these loves shall die. 

Not indeed in thought, — God be thanked : 

Nor yet in tears, — for He is merciful. But they shall 
die, as the leaves die, — die, as Spring dies into the 
heat and ripeness of Summer, and as boyhood dies 
into the elasticity and ambition of youth. Death, 
Distance, and Time shall each one of them dig gTaves 



A HOME SCENE. loi 

for your affections ; but this you do not know, nor 
can know, until the story of your life is ended. 

The dreams of riches, of love, of voyage, of learn- 
ing, that light up the boy age with splendor, will 
pass on and over into the hotter dreams of youth. 
Spring buds and blossoms, under the glowing sun 
of April, nurture at their heart those firstlings of 
fruit which the heat of Summer shall ripen. 

You little know — and for this you may well thank 
Heaven — that you are leaving the Spring of life, 
and that you are floating fast from the shady sources 
of your years into heat, bustle, and storm. Your 
dreams ai-e now faint, flickering shadows, that play 
like fire-flies in the coppices of leafy Jime. They 
have no rule but the rule of infantile desire ; they 
have no joys to promise greater than the joys that 
belong to yom- passing life ; they have no terrors 
but such terrors as the darkness of a Spring night 
makes. They do not take hold on your soul as the 
dreams of youth and manhood will do. 

Your highest hope is shadowed in a cheerful, 
boyish home. You wish no friends but the friends 
of boyhood ; no sister but your fond Nelly ; none to 
love better than the playful Madge. 

You forget, Clarence, that the Spring with you is 
the Spring with them, and that the storms of Sum- 
mer may chase wide shadows over your path and 



I02 DREAM-LIFE, 

over theirs. And you forget that Suimmer is even 
now lowering with its mist, and with its scorching 
rays, upon the hem of your flowery May. 

The hands of the old clock upon the mantel, 

that ticked off the hours when Charhe sighed and 
when CharUe died, di*aw on toward midnight. The 
shadows that the fire-flame makes grow dimmer and 
dimmer. And thus it is that Home, boy home, 
passes away forever, — like the swaying of a pendu- 
lum, — like the fading of a shadow on the floor. 



SUMMER; 

OR, 

THE DREAMS OF YOUTH, 



DREAMS OF YOUTH. 



Sum77ier. 



I FEEL a great deal of pity for those honest but 
misguided people who call their little, spruce 
suburban towns, or the shaded streets of their in- 
land cities, — the country ; and I have still more 
pity for those who reckon a season at the summer 
resorts — country enjoyment. Nay, my feeling is 
more violent than pity ; and I count it nothing less 
than blasphemy so to take the name of the country 
in vain. 

I thank Heaven every summer's day of my life, 
that my lot was humbly cast within the hearing of 
romping brooks, and beneath the shadow of oaks. 
And from all the tramp and bustle of the world into 
which fortune has led me in these latter years of 



io6 DREAM-LIFE. 

my life, I delight to steal away for days, and for 
weeks together, and bathe my spirit in the freedom 
of the old woods ; and to grow young again, lying 
upon the brook-side, and counting the white clouds 
that sail along the sky softly and tranquilly — even 
as holy memories go steahng over the vault of life. 

I am deeply thankful that I could never find it in 
my heart so to pervert truth as to call the smart vil- 
lages with the tricksy shadow of their maple avenues 
— the Country. 

I love these in their way, and can recall pleasant 
passages of thought, as I have idled through the 
Sabbath-looking towns, or lounged at the inn-door 
of some quiet New-England village. But I love far 
better to leave them behind me, and to dash boldly 
out to where some out-lying farm-house sits — like 
a sentinel — under the shelter of wooded hills, or 
nestles in the lap of a noiseless valley. 

In the town, small as it may be, and darkened as 
it may be with the shadows of trees, you cannot for- 
get — men. Their voice, and strife, and ambition 
come to your ej^e in the painted paling, in the 
swinging signboard of the tavern, and — worst of 
all — in the trim-printed " Attokney at Law." Even 
the little milliner's shop, with its meagre show of 
Leghorns, and its string across the window all 
hung with tabs and with cloth roses, is a sad epit- 



SUMMER, 107 

ome of the great and conventional life of a city 
neigliborliood. 

I like to be rid of them all, as I am rid of .them 
this midsummer's day. I like to steep my soul in a 
sea of quiet, with nothing floating past me, as I lie 
moored to my thought, but the perfume of flowers, 
and soaring birds, and shadows of clouds. 

Two days since I was sweltering in the heat of the 
City, jostled by the thousand eager workers, and 
panting under the shadow of the walls. But I have 
stolen away ; and for two hours of healthful re- 
growth into the darling Past I have been lying this 
blessed summer's morning upon the grassy bank of 
a stream that babbled me to sleep in boyhood. 
Dear old stream ! unchanging, unfaltering, — with 
no harsher notes now than then, — never growing 
old, — smiling in your silver rustle, and calming 
yourself in the broad, placid pools, — I love you, as 
I love a friend. 

But now that the sun has grown scalding hot, 
and the waves of heat have come rocking under the 
shadow of the meadow-oaks, I have sought shelter 
in a chamber of the old farm-house. The window- 
blinds are closed ; but some of them are sadly 
shattered, and I have intertwined in them a few 
branches of the late-blossoming white azaHa, so that 
every puff of the summer air comes to me cooled 



io8 DREAM-LIFE. 

with fragrance. A dimple or two of the sunlight 
still steals through my flowery screen, and dances 
(as the breeze moves the branches) upon the oaken 
floor of the farm-house. 

Through one little gap indeed I can see the broad 
stretch of meadow, and the workmen in the field 
bending and swaying to their scythes. I can see too 
the ghstening of the steel, as they wipe their blades, 
and can just catch floating on the air the measured, 
tinkhng thwack of the rifle-stroke. 

Here and there a lark, scared from his feeding- 
place in the grass, soars up, bubbling forth his 
melody in globules of silvery sound, and settles upon 
some tall tree, and waves his wings, and sinks to the 
swaying twigs. I hear too a quail piping from the 
meadow fence, and another trilling his answering 
whistle from the hills. Nearer by, a tyrant king- 
bird is poised on the topmost branch of a veteran 
pear-tree, and now and then dashes down, assassin- 
like, upon some home-bound, honey-laden bee, and 
then with a smack of his bill resumes his predatory 
watch. 

A chicken or two lie in the sun, with a wing and a 
leg stretched out, — lazily picking at the gravel, or 
reheving their ennui from time to time with a spas- 
modic rustle of their feathers. An old, matronly 
hen stalks about the yard with a sedate step, and 



SUMMER. 109 

witli quiet self-assui'ance slie utters an occasional 
series of hoarse and heated ' clucks. ' A speckled 
turkey, with an astonished brood at her heels, is eye- 
ing curiously, and with earnest variations of the 
head, a full-fed cat, that Hes curled up, and dozing, 
upon the floor of the cottage porch. 

As I sit thus, watching through the interstices of 
my leafy screen the various images of country life, 
I hear distant mutterings from beyond the hiUs. 

The sun has thrown its shadow upon the pewter 
dial two houi's beyond the meridian line. Great 
cream-colored heads of thunder-clouds are lifting- 
above the sharp, clear line of the western horizon ; 
the Hght breeze dies away, and the air becomes 
stifling, even under the shadow of my withered 
boughs in the chamber-window. The white-capped 
clouds roll up nearer and nearer to the sun, and the 
creamy masses below gi'ow dark in their seams. 
The mutterings, that came faintly before, now 
spread into wide volumes of roUing sound, that echo 
again and again from the eastward heights. 

I hear in the deep intervals the men shouting to 
their teams in the meadows ; and gTeat companies 
of startled swallows are dashing in all dkections 
around the gray roofs of the barn. 

The clouds have now well-nigh reached the sun, 
which seems to shine the fiercer for his coming 



no DREAM-LIFE. 

eclipse. The whole west, as I look from the sources 
of the brook to its lazy drift under the swamps that 
lie to the south, is hung with a curtain of darkness ; 
and like swift-working, golden ropes, that lift it 
toward the zenith, long chains of lightning flash 
through it ; and the growing thunder seems like 
the rumble of the pulleys. 

I thrust away my azalia-boughs, and fling back 
the shattered blinds, as the sun and the clouds 
meet, and my room darkens with the coming 
shadows. For an instant the edges of the thick, 
creamy masses of cloud are gilded by the shrouded 
sun, and show gorgeous scollops of gold, that toss 
upon the hem of the storm. But the blazonry 
fades as the clouds mount ; and the brightening 
lines of the lightning dart up from the lower 
skirts, and heave the billowy masses into the middle 
heaven. 

The workmen are urging their oxen fast across 
the meadow, and the loiterers come straggHng after 
with rakes upon their shoulders. The matronly hen 
has retreated to the stable-door ; and the brood of 
turkej^s stand dressing their feathers under the 
open shed. 

The air freshens, and blows — now from the face 
of the coming clouds. I see the great elms in the 
plain swaying their tops, even before the storm- 



SUMMER. Ill 

breeze has readied me ; and a bit of ripened grain 
upon as well of the meadow, waves and tosses like 
a billowy sea. 

Presently I hear the rush of the wind ; and the 
cherry and pear trees rustle through all their leaves ; 
and my paper is whisked away by the intruding 
blast. 

There is a quiet of a moment, in which the wind 
even seems weary and faint, and nothing finds 
utterance save one hoarse tree-toad, doling out his 
lugubrious notes. 

Now comes a blinding flash from the clouds, and 
a quick, sharp clang clatters through the heavens, 
and bellows loud and long among the hills. Then 

— like great grief spending its pent agony in tears 

— come the big drops of rain, — pattering on the 
lawn and on the leaves, and most musically of all 
upon the roof above me, — not now with the Hght 
dance of the Spring shower, but with strong foot- 
falls, like the first proud tread of Youth ! 



Cloister Life. 

IT has very likely occurred to you, my reader, that 
I am playing the wanton in these sketches, and 
am breaking through all the canons of the writers 
in making You my hero. 

It is even so ; for my work is a story of those 
vague feelings, doubts, passions, which belong more 
or less to every man of us all ; and therefore it is 
that I lay upon your shoulders the burden of these 
dreams. If this or that one never belonged to your 
experience, have patience for a while. I feel sure 
that others are coming which will He hke a truth 
upon your heart, and draw you unwittingly — per- 
haps tearfully even — into the belief that You are 
indeed my hero. 

The scene now changes to the cloister of a 
college ; not the gray, classic cloisters which lie 



CLOISTER LIFE. 113 

along the banks of tlie Cam or the Isis, — huge, 
battered hulks, on whose weather-stained decks 
great captains of learning have fought away their 
lives, — nor yet the cavernous, quadrangular courts 
that sleep under the dingy walls of the Sorbonne. 

The youth-dreams of Clarence begin under the 
roof of one of those long, ungainly piles of brick 
and mortar which make the colleges of New Eng- 
land. 

The floor of the room is rough, and divided by 
wide seams. The study-table does not stand firmly 
without a few spare pennies to prop it into solid 
footing. The bookcase of stained fir-wood, sus- 
pended against the wall by cords, is meagrely 
stocked with a couple of Lexicons, a pair of Gram- 
mars, a Euclid, a Xenophon, a Homer, and a Livy. 
Beside these are scattered about here and there a 
thumb- worn copy of British ballads, an odd volume 
of the " Sketch-Book," a clumsy Shakspeare, and a 
pocket edition of the Bible. 

With such appHances, added to the half-score of 
professors and tutors who preside over the awful 
precincts, you are to work your way up to that 
proud entrance upon our American life which be- 
gins with the Baccalaureate degree. There is a 
tingling sensation in first walking under the shadow 
of those walls, uncouth as they are, and in feeling 



114 DREAM-LIFE. 

that you belong to them, — that you are a member, 
as it Avere, of the body-corporate, subject to an ac- 
tual code of printed laws, and to actual moneyed 
fines varying from a shilling to fifty cents. 

There is something exhilarating in the very con- 
sciousness of your subject state, and in the necessity 
of measuring your hours by the habit of such a 
learned community. You recall your old-fashioned 
respect for the lank figure of some teacher of boy- 
days as a childish weakness ; even the little coteries 
of the home fire-side lose their importance when 
compared with the extraordinary sweep and dignity 
of your present jposition. 

It is pleasant to measure yourself with men ; and 
there are those about you who seem to your un- 
taught eye to be men already. Your chum, a hard- 
faced fellow of ten more years than you, digging 
sturdily at his tasks, seems by that very community 
of work to dignify your labor. You watch his cold, 
gray eye bending down over some theorem of Eu- 
clid, with a kind of proud companionship in what 
so tasks his manliness. 

It is nothing for him to quit sleep at the first 
tinklmg of the alarm-clock that hangs in your 
chamber, or to brave the weather in that cheerless 
run to the morning prayers of Winter. Yet with 
what a dreamy horror you wake on mornings of 



CLOISTER LIFE. 115 

snow to that tinkling alarum ! — and glide in the 
cold and darkness under the shadow of the college- 
walls, shuddeiing under the sharp gusts that come 
sweeping between the buildings, — and afterward, 
gathering yourself up in youi' cloak, watch in a 
sleepy, listless maze the flickering lamps that hang 
around the dreary chapel ! You follow half uncon- 
sciously some tutor's rhetorical reading of a chapter 
of Isaiah ; and then, as he closes the Bible with a 
flourish, your eye, half open, catches the feeble fig- 
m-e of the old Dominie as he steps to the desk, and 
with his frail hand stretched out upon the cover of 
the big book, and his head leaning slightly to one 
side, runs through in gentle and tremulous tones 
liis wonted form of invocation. 

Your Division room is steaming with foul heat, 
and there is a strong smell of bm-nt feathers and 
oil. A jaunty tutor with pug nose, and consequen- 
tial air steps into the room — while you all rise to 
show him deference — and takes his place at the 
pulpit-like desk. Then come the formal loosing 
of his camlet cloak-clasp, — the opening of his 
sweaty Xenophon to where the day's 'paramngs be- 
gin, — the unsliding of his silver pencil-case, — the 
keen, sour look around the benches, and the cool 
pinch of his thumb and forefinger into the fearful 
box of names. 



ii6 DREAM-LIFE. 

How you listen for each as it is uttered, — run- 
ning clown the page in advance, — rejoicing when 
some hard passage comes to a stout man in the cor- 
ner ; and what a sigh of relief — on mornings after 
you have been out late at night — when the last para- 
graph is reached, the ballot drawn, and — you, safe ! 

You speculate dreamily upon the fortunes of the 
men whose faces you see around you. You wonder 
what sort of schooling they may have had, and what 
sort of homes. You think one man has got an ex- 
traordinary name, and another a still more extra- 
ordinary nose. The glib, easy way of one stud- 
ent, and his perfect sang-froid, completely charm 
you : you set him down in your own mind as a kind 
of Crichton. Another thin-faced, pinched- up fel- 
low in a scant cloak, you think must have been 
sometime a school-master : he is so very precise, 
and wears such an indescribable look of the ferule. 
There is another big student, with a huge beard 
and a rollicking good-natured eye, whom you would 
quite like to see measure strength with your old 
school-master ; and on careful comparison rather 
think the school-master would get the worst of it. 
Still another appears as venerable as some fathers 
you have seen ; and it seems wonderfully odd that 
a man old enough to have children should recite 
Xenophon by morning candle-light. 



CLOISTER LIFE. 117 

The class in advance you study curiously ; and 
are quite amazed at the precocity of certain youths 
belonging to it, who are apparently about your own 
age. The Juniors you look upon with a quiet re- 
verence for their aplomb and dignity of character ; 
and look forward with intense yearnings to the time 
when you too shall be admitted freely to the ]ore- 
cincts of the Philosophical chamber, and to the very 
steej) benches of the Laboratory. This last seems, 
from occasional peeps tlu'ough the blinds, a most 
mysterious building. The chimneys, recesses, vats, 
and cisterns — to say nothing of certain galvanic 
communications, which, you are told, traverse the 
whole building in a way capable of killing a rat at 
an incredible remove from the bland professor — 
utterly fatigue your wonder. You humbly trust — 
though you have doubts upon the point — that you 
will have the capacity to grasp it all, when once you 
shall have arrived at the dignity of a Junior. 

As for the Seniors, your admiration for them is 
entirely boundless. In one or two individual in- 
stances, it is true, it has been broken down by an 
unfortunate squabble with thick-set fellows in the 
Chapel aisle. A person who sits not far before you 
at prayers, and whose name you seek out very early, 
bears a strong resemblance to some portrait of Dr. 
Johnson ; you have very much the same kind of re- 



ii8 DREAM-LIFE. 

spect for liim that you feel for tlie great lexico- 
graplier, and do not for a moment doubt his capa- 
city to compile a dictionary equal, if not superior, to 
Johnson's. 

Another man with very bushy, black hair, and an 
easy look of importance, carries a large cane, and is 
represented to you as an astonishing scholar and 
speaker. You do not doubt it ; his very air pro- 
claims it. You think of him as presently — (say 
four or five years hence) — astounding the United 
States Senate with his eloquence. And when once 
you have heard him in debate, with that ineffable 
gesture of his, you absolutely languish in your ad- 
miration for him, and you describe his speaking to 
your country friends as very little inferior, if at all, 
to Mr. Burke's. Beside this one are some half 
dozen others, among whom the question of superior- 
ity is, you understand, strongly mooted. It puzzles 
you to think, what an avalanche of talent will fall 
upon the country at the graduation of those Seniors. 

You will find however that the country bears such 
inundations of college talent with a remarkable 
degree of equanimity. It is quite wonderful how 
all the Burkes, and Scotts, and Peels, among col- 
lege Seniors, do quietly disappear, as a man gets on 
in life. 

As for any degree of fellowship with such giants. 



CLOISTER LIFE. 119 

it is an honor hardly to be thought of. But you 
have a classmate — I will call him Dalton — who is 
very intimate with a dashing Senior ; they room 
near each other outside the college. You quite 
emy Dalton, and you come to know him well. He 
says that you are not a "green-one," — that you 
have " cut your eye-teeth ; " in return for which 
complimentary opinions you entertain a strong 
friendship for Dalton. 

He is a " fast " fellow, as the Senior calls him ; 
and it is a proud thing to happen at their rooms oc- 
casionally, and to match yourself for an hour or two 
(with the windows darkened) against a Senior at 
"old sledge." It is quite " the thing," as Dalton says, 
to meet a Senior familiarly in the street. Some- 
times you go, after Dalton has taught you "the 
ropes," to have a cosy sit-down over oysters and 
champagne, — to which the Senior lends himself 
(you having lent the money) with the pleasantest 
condescension in the world. You are not altogether 
used to hard drinking ; but this you conceal — as 
most spirited young fellows do — by drinking a 
great deal You have a dim recollection of certain 
circumstances — very unimportant, yet very vividly 
impressed on your mind — which occurred on one 
of these occasions. 

The oysters were exceedingly fine, and the cham- 



I20 DREAM-LIFE. 

pagne exquisite. You have a recollection of some- 
thing being said, toward the end of the first bottle, 
of Xenophon, and of the Senior's saying in his play- 
ful way, " Oh, d — n Xenophon ! " 

You remember Dalton laughed at this ; and you 
laughed — for company. You remember that you 
thought, and Dalton thought, and the Senior 
thought, by a singular coincidence, that the second 
bottle of champagne was better even than the first. 
You have a dim remembrance of the Senior's saying 
very loudly, " Clarence — (calling you by your fam- 
ily name) — is no spooney ; " and drinking a bum- 
per with you in confirmation of the remark. 

You remember that Dalton broke out into a song, 
and that for a time you joined in the chorus ; you 
think the Senior called you to order for repeating 
the chorus in the wi'ong place. You think the 
lights burned with remarkable brilliancy ; and you 
remember that a remark of yours to that effect met 
with very much such a response from the Senior as 
he had before employed with reference to Xeno- 
phon. 

You have a confused idea of calling Dalton — Xen- 
ophon. You think the meeting broke up with a 
chorus, and that somebody — you cannot tell who 
— broke two or three glasses. You remember 
questioning yourself very seriously as to whether 



I 



CLOISTER LIFE. 121 

you were, or were not, tipsy. You think you de- 
cided that you were not, but — might be. 

You have a confused recollection of leaning upon 
some one, or something, going to your room ; this 
sense of a desire to lean, you think, was very strong. 
You remember being horribly afflicted with the 
idea of having tried your night-key at the tutor's 
door, instead of your own ; you remember further a 
hot stove, — made certain indeed by a large blister 
which appeared on your hand next day. You 
think of throwing off your clothes by one or two 
spasmodic efforts, — leaning in the intervals against 
the bed-post. 

There is a recollection of an uncommon dizziness 
afterward, as if j^our body was very quiet, and your 
head gyrating with strange velocity, and a kind of 
centrifugal action, all about the room, and the col- 
lege, and indeed the whole town. You think that 
you felt uncontrollable nausea after this, followed by 
positive sickness, — which waked your chum, who 
thought you very incoherent, and feared derange- 
ment. 

A dismal state of lassitude follows, broken by the 
college- clock striking three, and by very rambling 
reflections upon champagne, Xenophon, " Captain 
Dick," Madge, and the old deacon who clinched his 
wig in the church. 



122 DREAM-LIFE. 

The next morning (ah, how vexatious that all our 
follies are followed by a " next morning ! ") you 
wake with a parched mouth, and a torturing thirst ; 
the sun is shining broadly into your reeking cham- 
ber. Praj^ers and recitations are long ago over ; 
and you see through the door in the outer room 
that hard-faced chum with his Lexicon and Livy 
open before him, working out with aU the earnest- 
ness of his iron purpose the steady steps toward 
preferment and success. 

You go with some story of sudden sickness to the 
tutor, — half fearful that the bloodshot, swollen eyes 
wiU betray you. It is very mortifying too to meet 
Dalton appearing so gay and lively after it all, while 
you wear such an air of being "used up." You 
en^^ him thoroughly the extraordinary capacity 
that he has. 

Here and there creej)s in, amid all the pride and 
shame of the new life, a tender thought of the old 
home ; but its joys are joys no longer : its highest 
aspirations even have resolved themselves into a fine 
mist, — like rainbows that the sun drinks with his 
beams. 

The affection for a mother, whose kindness you 
recall with a suffused eye, is not gone, or blighted; 
but it is woven up, as only a single adorning tissue, 
into the growing pride of youth : it is cherished in 



CLOISTER LIFE. 123 

the proud soul rather as a redeeming wealmess than 
as a vital force, or element of safety. 

And the love for Nelly, though it bates no jot of 
fervor, is woven into the scale of growing i^ui^DOses 
rather as a color to adorn than as a strand to 
strengthen. 

As for your other loves, those romantic ones 
which were kindled by bright eyes, and the stolen 
reading of Miss Porter's novels, they linger on your 
mind hke perfumes ; and they float down your 
memory — with the fignire, the step, the last words 
of those young girls who created them — like the 
types of some dimly shadowed but deeper passion, 
which is some time to spur your maturer purposes 
and to quicken your manly resolves. 

It would be hard to tell, for you do not as yet 
know, but that Madge herself — hoydenish, blue- 
eyed Madge — is to be the very one who will gain 
such hold upon your riper affections as she has held 
already over j^our boyish caprice. It is a part of 
the pride — I may say rather an evidence of the 
pride — which youth feels in leading boyhood be- 
hind him, to talk laughingly and carelessly of 
those attachments which made his young years so 
balmy with dreams. 



n. 

First Amhition, 

I BELIEVE that sooner or later there come to 
every man dreams of ambition. They may be 
covered with the sloth of habit, or with the pretence 
of humility ; they may come only in dim, shadowy 
visions, that feed the eye like the glories of an ocean 
sunrise ; but you may be sure that they will come. 
Even before one is aware, the bold, adventurous 
goddess, whose name is Ambition, and whose dower 
is Fame, will be toying with the feeble heart. And 
she pushes her ventures with a bold hand ; she 
makes timidity strong, and weakness valiant. 

The way of a man's heart will be foreshadowed 
by what goodness lies in him, — coming from above, 
and from around ; — but a way foreshadowed is not 
a way made. And the making of a man's way 
comes only from that quickening of resolve which 



FIRST AMBITION, 125 

we call Ambition. It is the spur tliat makes man 
struggle with Destiny : it is Heaven's own incentive, 
to make Purpose great, and Achievement greater. 

It would be strange if you, in that cloister Hfe of 
a college, did not sometimes feel a dawning of new 
resolves. They grapple you indeed oftener than you 
dare to speak of. Here you dream first of that very- 
sweet, but very shadowy success called Keputation. 

You think of the delight and astonishment it 
would give j^our mother and father, and most of all 
little Nelly, if you were winning such honors as now 
escape you. You measure your capacities by those 
about you, and watch their habit of stud}^ ; you gaze 
for a half-hour together ujDon some successful man 
who has won his prizes, and wonder by what secret 
action he has done it. And when in time you come 
to be a competitor youi'self, your anxiety is im- 
mense. 

You spend hours upon hours at your theme. You 
write and rewrite ; and when it is at length complete 
and out of your hands, you are harassed by a thou- 
sand doubts. At times, as you recall your hours of 
toil, you question if so much has been spent upon 
any other ; you feel almost certain of success. You 
repeat to yourself some passages of special elo- 
quence, at night. You fancy the admiration of the 
professors at meeting with such a wonderful per- 



126 DREAM-LIFE. 

formance. You have a slight fear that its superior 
goodness mary awaken suspicion that some one out 
of the college — some superior man, may have 
written it. But this fear dies away. 

The eventful day is a great one in your calendar ; 
you hardly sleep the night previous. You tremble 
as the chapel-bell is rung ; you profess to be very 
indifferent, as the reading and the prayer close ; you 
even stoop to take up your hat, as if you had entirely 
overlooked the fact that the old President was in 
the desk for the express j)urpose of declaring the 
successful names. You hsten dreamily to his trem- 
ulous, yet fearfully distinct enunciation. Your head 
swims strangely. 

They all pass out with a harsh murmur along the 
aisles and through the doorways. It would be well 
if there were no disappointments in life more temble 
than this. It is consoling to express very depreciat- 
ing opinions of the Faculty in general, — and very 
contemptuous ones of that particular officer who 
decided upon the merit of the prize-themes. An 
evening or two at Dalton's room go still farther 
toward healing the disappointment, and — if it must 
be said — toward moderating the heat of your am- 
bition. 

You grow up however, unfortunately, as the college 
years fly by, into a very exaggerated sense of your 



FIRST AMBITION. 127 

own capacities. Even the good, old, white-haired 
Squire, for whom you once entertained so much 
respect, seems to jovlv crazy, classic fancy, a very 
humdrum sort of j)ersonage. Frank, although as 
noble a fellow as ever sat a horse, is yet — you can- 
not lielj) thinking — very ignorant of Euripides ; 
even the English master at Dr. Bidlow's school, you 
feel sm^e, would balk at a dozen j)roblems you could 
give him. 

You get an exalted idea of that uncertain quality 
which turns the heads of a vast many of yom- 
fellows, called — Genius. An odd notion seems to be 
inherent in the atmosphere of those college cham- 
bers, that there is a certain faculty of mind — first 
developed, as would seem, in colleges — which ac- 
comphshes whatever it chooses without any special 
painstaking. For a time you fall yourself into this 
very unfortunate hallucination ; you cultivate it after 
the usual college fashion, by drinking a vast deal of 
strong coffee and whiskey-toddy, — by writing a little 
poor verse in the Byronic temper, and by studying 
very late at night with closed blinds. 

It costs you however more anxiety and hypocrisy 
than you could possibly have believed. 

You will learn, Clarence, when the Autumn 

has rounded your hopeful Summer, if not before, 
that there is no Genius in hfe like the Genius of 



128 DREAM-LIFE, 

energy and industry. You will learn, that all the 
traditions so current among very young men that 
certain great characters have wrought their greatness 
by an insx^iration, as it were, grow out of a sad mis- 
take. 

And you will further find, when you come to 
measure yourself with men, that there are no rivals 
so formidable as those earnest, determined minds 
which reckon the value of every hour, and which 
achieve eminence by persistent application. 

Literary ambition may inflame you at certain 
periods, and a thought of some great names will 
flash like a spark into the mine of your purposes ; 
you dream till midnight over books ; you set up 
shadows, and chase them down, — other shadows, 
and they fly. Dreaming will never catch them. 
Nothing makes the " scent lie well" in the hunt af- 
ter distinction, but labor. 

And it is a glorious thing, when once you are 
weary of the dissipation, and the ennui of your own 
aimless thought, to take u]3 some glowing page of 
an earnest thinker, and read — deep and long, until 
you feel the metal of his thought tinkling on your 
brain, and striking out from your flinty lethargy 
flashes of ideas that give the mind light and heat. 
And away you go in the chase of what the soul 
within is creating on the instant, and you wonder at 



FIRST AMBITION. 129 

the fecundity of what seemed so barren, and at the 
ripeness of what seemed so crude. The glow of 
toil wakes you to the consciousness of your real 
capacities : you feel sure that they have taken a new 
step toward final development. In such mood it is, 
that one feels grateful to the musty tomes, which 
at other hours stand like wonder-making mummies 
with no warmth and no vitality. Now they grow 
into the affections like new-found friends, and gain 
a hold upon the heart, and light a fire in the brain, 
that the years and the mould cannot cover nor 
quench. 

9 



III. 

College Romance. 

IN following the mental vagaries of youth, I must 
not forget the curvetings and wiltings of the 
heart. 

The black-eyed Jenny, with whom a correspon- 
dence at red heat was kept up for several weeks, 
is long before this entirely out of your regard, — not 
so much by reason of the six months' disparity of 
age, as from the fact, communicated quite confi- 
dentially by the travelled Nat, that she has had a 
desperate flirtation with a handsome midshipman. 
The conclusion is natural that she is an inconstant, 
cruel-hearted creature, with little appreciation of 
real worth ; and furthermore, that all midshipmen 
are a very contemptible — not to say dangerous — 
set of men. She is consigned to forge tfulness and 
neglect ; and the late lover has long ago consoled 



COLLEGE ROMANCE. 131 

himself by reading in a spirited way that passage of 
Childe Harold commencing, — 

" I have not loved the world, nor the world me." 

As for Madge, the memory of her has been more 
wakeful, but less violent. To say nothing of occa- 
sional returns to the old homestead, when you have 
met her, Nelly's letters not unfrequently drop a care- 
less half-sentence that keeps her strangely in mind. 

"Madge," she says, "is sitting by me with her 
work ;" or, "You ought to see the little silk purse 
that Madge is knitting ; " or, — speaking of some 
country rout, — "Madge was there in the sweetest 
dress you can imagine." All this will keep Madge 
in mind ; not, it is true, in the ambitious moods, or 
in the frolics with Dalton ; but in those odd half- 
houi's that come stealing over one at twihght, laden 
with sweet memories of the days of old. 

A new romantic admu-ation is started by those 
pale lady-faces which light up on a Sunday the 
gallery of the college chapel. An amiable and 
modest fancy gives to them all a sweet classic grace. 
The very atmosphere of these courts, wakened with 
high metaphysic discoui'se, seems to lend them a 
Greek beauty and fineness ; and you attach to the 
prettiest, that your eye can reach, all the charms of 
some Sciote maiden, and all the learning of her 



132 DREAM-LIFE. 

father — the professor. And as you lie half -wakeful 
and half-dreaming, through the long Divisions of the 
Doctor's morning discourse, the twinkhng eyes in 
some corner of the galleiy bear you pleasant com- 
pany as you float down on those streaming visions 
which radiate from you far over the track of the 
coming life. 

But following very closely upon this comes a 
whole volume of street romance. There are prettily 
shaped figures that go drifting at convenient hours 
for college obsei'vation along the thoroughfares of 
the town. And these figures come to be known, 
and the dresses, and the streets ; and even the door- 
plate is studied. The hours are ascertained, by 
careful observation and induction, at which some 
particular figure is to be met, — or is to be seen at 
some low parlor-window, in white summer dress, 
with head leaning on the hand, very melancholy, 
and very dangerous. Perhaps her very card is stuck 
proudly into a corner of the min-or in the coUege- 
chamber. After this may come moonlight meetings 
at the gate, or long Hstenings to the plaintive lyrics 
that steal out of the parlor-windows, and that blur 
wofuUy the text of the Conic Sections. 

Or perhaps she is under the fierce eye of some 
Cerberus of a schoolmistress, about whose grounds 
you prowl piteously, searching for small knot-holes 



COLLEGE ROMANCE. 133 

in the surrounding board fence, through which little 
souvenirs of impassioned feeling may be thrust. 
Sonnets are written for the town papers, full of tell- 
ing phrases, and with classic allusions and foot-notes 
which draw attention to some similar feUcity of ex- 
pression in Horace or Ovid. Correspondence may 
even be ventured on, enclosing locks of haii', and 
interchanging rings, and paper oaths of eternal 
fidelity. 

But the old Cerberus is very wakeful : the letters 
fail ; the lamp that used to ghmmer for a sign 
among the sycamores is gone out ; a stolen wave of 
a handkerchief, a despairing look, and tears, — which 
you fancy, but do not see, — make you miserable 
for long days. 

The tyrant teacher, with no trace of compassion 
in her withered heart, reports you to the college au- 
thorities. There is a long lecture of admonition 
upon the folly of such dangerous practices ; and if 
the offence be aggravated by some recent joviality 
with Dalton and the Senior, you are condemned to a 
month of exile with a country clergyman. There are 
a few tearful regrets over the painful tone of the 
home letters ; but the bracing country air, and the 
pretty faces of the village girls, heal your heart — 
with fresh wounds. 

The old Doctor sees dimly through his spectacles ; 



134 DREAM-LIFE, 

and his pew gives a good look-out upon the smiling 
choir of singers. A collegian wears the honors of 
a stranger, and the country bucks stand but poor 
chance in contrast with your wonderful attainments 
in cravats and verses. But this fresh dream, odor- 
ous with its memories of sleigh-rides or hlac- 
blossoms, shps by, and yields again to the more 
ambitious dreams of the cloister. 

In the prouder moments that come when you are 
more a man and less a boy, — with more of strategy 
and less of faith, — your thought of woman runs 
loftily ; not loftily in the reahn of virtue or goodness, 
but loftily on your new world-scale. The pride of 
intellect, that is thirsting in you, fashions ideal 
graces after a classic model. The heroines of fable 
are admired ; and the soul is tortured with that in- 
tensity of passion which gleams through the broken 
utterances of Grecian tragedy. 

In the vanity of self-consciousness one feels at a 
long remove above the ordinary love and trustfulness 
of a simple and pure heart. You turn away from all 
such with a sigh of conceit, to graze on that lofty but 
bitter pasturage where no daisies grow. Admiration 
may be called up by some gi-aceful figure that you 
see moving under those sweeping elms ; and you 
follow it with an intensity of look that makes you 
blush, and straightway hide the memory of the blush 



COLLEGE ROMANCE. 135 

by summing up some ai*tful sophistry, that resolves 
your deHghted gaze into a weakness, and your con- 
tempt into a virtue. 

But this cannot last. As the years drop off, a 
certaiQ pair of eyes beam one day upon you that 
seem to have been cut out of a page of Greek poetry. 
They have all its sentiment, its fire, its intellectual 
reaches : it would be hard to say what they have 
not. The profile is a Greek profile, and the heavy 
chestnut hair is plaited in Greek bands. The figure, 
too, might easily be that of Helen, or of Andro- 
mache. 

You gaze, ashamed to gaze ; and your heart 
yearns, ashamed of its yearning. It is no young- 
girl who is thus testing you : there is too much 
pride for that. A ripeness and maturity rest upon 
her look and figure that completely fill up that ideal 
which exaggerated fancies have wrought out of the 
Grecian heaven. The vision steals upon you at all 
hours, — now rounding its flowing outline to the 
mellifluous metre of Epic hexameter, and again 
with its bounding life pulsating with the glorious 
dashes of tragic verse. 

Yet with the exception of stolen glances and 
secret admiration, you keep aloof. There is no 
wish to fathom what seems a happy mystery. 
There lies a content in secret obeisance. Some- 



136 DREAM-LIFE, 

times it shames you, as your mind glows with its 
fancied dignity ; but the heart thrusts in its voice ; 
and, yielding to it, you dream dreams like fond old 
Boccaccio's upon the olive-shaded slopes of \idX^\ 
The tongue even is not trusted with the thoughts 
that are seething within : they begin and end in the 
voiceless pulsations of your nature. 

After a time — it seems a long time, but it is in 
truth a very short time — you find who she is who 
is thus entrancing you. It is done most carelessly. 
No creature could imagine that you felt any interest 
in the accomphshed sister — of your friend Dalton. 
Yet it is even she who has thus beguiled you ; and 
she is at least some ten years Dalton's senior, and 
by even more years — your own ! 

It is singular enough, but it is true, that the af- 
fections of that transition state from youth to man- 
liness i-un toward the types of maturity. The 
mind in its reaches toward strength and complete- 
ness creates a heart- sympathy — which in its turn 
craves fulness. There is a vanity too about the first 
steps of manly education, which is disposed to un- 
derrate the innocence and unripened judgment of 
the other sex. Men see the mistake as they grow 
older ; for the judgment of a woman, in aU matters 
of the affections, ripens by ten years faster than a 
man's. 



COLLEGE ROMANCE, 137 

In place of any relentings on such score you are 
set on fire anew. The stories of her accomplish- 
ments, and of her grace of conversation, absolutely 
drive you mad. You watch your occasion for meet- 
ing her upon the street. You wonder if she has 
any conception of your capacity for mental labor, 
and if she has any adequate idea of your admiration 
for Greek poetry, and for — herself. 

You tie your cravat poet-wise, and wear broad 
collars turned down, wondering how such disposi- 
tion may affect her. Her figure and stej) become a 
kind of moving romance to you, drifting forward 
and outward into that great land of dreams which 
you call the world. When you see her walking 
with others, you pity her, and feel perfectly sure 
that, if she had only a hint of that intellectual fer- 
vor which in your own mind blazes up at the very 
thought of her, she would perfectly scorn the stout 
gentleman who spends his force in tawdry com- 
pliments. 

A visit to your home wakens ardor by contrast as 
much as by absence. Madge, so gentle, and now 
stealing sly looks at you in a way so different from 
her hoydenish manner of school-days, you regard 
complacently as a most lovable, fond girl, — the 
very one for some fond and amiable young man 
whose soul is not filled, as yours is, with higher 



138 DREAM'LIFE.^^^ 

things! To Nelly, earnestly listening, you drop 
only exaggerated hints of the wonderful beauty 
and dignity of this new Queen of your fancy. Of 
her age you scrupulously say nothing. 

The trivialities of Dalton amaze you : it is hard to 
understand how a man within the limits of such in- 
fluences as Miss Dalton must inevitably exert, can 
tamely sit down to a rubber of whist, and cigars. 
There must be a sad lack of congeniality ; — it 
would certainly be a proud thing to supply that 
lack! 

The new feeling, wild and vague as it is, — for as 
yet you have only most casual acquaintance with 
Laura Dalton, — invests the whole habit of your 
study ; not quickening overmuch the relish for Du- 
gald Stewart, or the miserable skeleton of college 
Logic, but spending a sweet charm upon the graces 
of E-hetoric and the music of Classic Verse. It 
blends harmoniously with your quickened ambition. 
There is some last appearance that you have to 
make upon the college stage, in the presence of the 
great worthies of the State, and of all the beauties 
of the town, — Laura chiefest among them. In 
view of it you feel dismally intellectual. Prodigious 
faculties are to be brought to the task. 

You think of throwing out ideas that will quite 
startle His Excellency the Governor, and those very 



COLLEGE ROMANCE. 139 

distinguislied public characters whom the college 
purveyors vote into their periodic public sittings. 
You are quite sure of surprising them, and of 
deeply provoking such scheming, shallow politicians 
as have never read Wayland's " Treatise," and who 
venture incautiously within hearing of your re- 
marks. You fancy yourself in advance the victim of 
a long leader in the next day's paper, and the 
thoughtful but quiet cause of a great change in the 
political programme of the State. But crowning 
and eclix^sing all the triumph, are those dark eyes 
beaming on you from some corner of the church 
their floods of unconscious praise and tenderness. 

Your father and Nelly are there to greet you. 
He has spoken a few calm, quiet words of en- 
couragement, that make you feel — ver}"- wrongfully 
— that he is a cold man, with no earnestness of feel- 
ing. As for Nelly, she clasps your arm with a 
fondness, and with a pride, that tell at every step 
her praises and her love. 

But even this, time and healthful as it is, fades 
before a single word of commendation from the new 
arbitress of your feeling. You have seen Miss Dal- 
ton ! You have met her on that last evening of 
your cloistered Hfe in all the elegance of ball cos- 
tume ; your eye has feasted on her elegant figure, 
and upon her eye sparkling with the consciousness 



I40 DREAM-LIFE. 

of beauty. You have talked with Miss Dalton 
about Byron, about "Wordsworth, about Homer. 
You have quoted poetry to Miss Dalton ; you have 
clasped Miss Dalton's hand ! 

Her conversation delights you by its piquancy and 
grace ; she is quite ready to meet you (a grave mat- 
ter of surprise !) upon whatever subject you may 
suggest. You lapse easily and lovingly into the cur- 
rent of her thought, and blush to find yourself va- 
cantly admiring when she is looking for reply. The 
regard you feel for her resolves itself into an ex- 
quisite mental love, vastly superior, as you think, 
to any other kind of love. There is no dream of 
marriage as yet, but only of sitting beside her in 
the moonlight during a countless succession of 
hours, and talking of poetry and nature, of destiny 
and love. 

Magnificent Miss Dalton I 

And all the while vaunting youth is almost 

mindless of the presence of that fond Nelly whose 
warm sisterly affection measures itself hopefully 
against the proud associations of your growing years, 
— and whose deep, loving eye, half suffused with its 
native tenderness, seems longing to win you back 
to the old joys of that Home-love, which linger on 
the distant horizon of your boyhood like the golden 
glories of a sinking day. 



COLLEGE ROMANCE. 141 

As the night wanes, you wander for a last look 
toward the dingy walls that have made for you so 
long a home. The old broken expectancies, the 
days of glee, the triumphs, the rivaMes, the defeats, 
the friendships, are recalled with a fluttering of the 
heart that pride cannot wholly subdue. You step 
upon the chapel-porch in the quiet of the night as 
you would step on the graves of friends. You pace 
back and forth in the wan moonlight, dreaming of that 
dim life which opens wide and long from the mor- 
row. The width and length oppress you : they crush 
down your struggling self-consciousness Hke Titans 
dealing with Pygmies. A single piercing thought 
of the vast and shadowy future, which is so near, 
tears off on the instant all the gewgaws of pride, 
strips away the vanity that doubles your bigness, 
and forces you down to the bare nakedness of what 
you truly are ! 

With one more yearning look at the gray hulks of 
building, you loiter away under the trees. The 
monster elms, which have bowered your proud steps 
through four years of proudest life, hft up to the 
night their rounded canopy of leaves with a quiet 
majesty that mocks you. They kiss the same calm 
sky which they wooed four years ago ; and they 
droop their traihng limbs lovingly to the same earth, 
which has steadily and quietly wrought in them 



142 DREAM-LIFE. 

their stature and their strength. Only here and 
there you catch the loitering footfall of some other 
benighted dreamer, strolling around the vast quad- 
rangle of level green, which lies, like a prairie-child, 
under the edging shadows of the town. The lights 
glimmer one by one ; and one by one, like breaking 
hopes, they fade away from the houses. The full- 
risen moon, that dapples the ground beneath the 
trees, touches the tall church-spires with silver, and 
slants their loftiness — as memory slants grief — in 
long, dark, tapering lines upon the silvered Green. 



IV. 

First Looh at the World. 

OUE Clarence is now fairly afloat upon the swift 
tide of Youth. The thrall of teachers is ended, 
and the audacity of self-resolve is begun. It is not 
a httle odd, that when we have least strength to 
combat the world, we have the highest confidence in 
our ability. 

Very few individuals are met with anywhere, who 
possess that happy consciousness of their own prow- 
ess which belongs to the newly graduated collegian. 
He has most abounding faith in the tricksy panoply 
that he has wrought out of the metal of his Classics. 
His Mathematics, he has not a doubt, will solve for 
him every complexity of life's questions ; and his 
Logic vnll as certainly untie all Gordian knots, 
whether in politics or ethics. 

He has no idea of defeat ; he proposes to take the 



144 DREAM-LIFE. 

world by storm ; he half wonders that quiet people 
are not startled by his presence. He brushes with 
an air of importance about the halls of country 
hotels ; he wears his honors at the public tables ; he 
fancies that the inattentive guests can have little idea 
that the young gentleman, who so recently delighted 
the public ear with his dissertation on the " General 
Tendency of Opinion," is actually among them, and 
quietly eating from the same dish of beef and of 
pudding. 

Our poor Clarence does not know — Heaven for- 
bid he should ! — that he is but Htlle wiser now 
than when he turned his back upon the old Academy, 
with its gallipots and broken retorts ; and that with 
the addition of a few Greek roots, a smattering of 
Latin, and some readiness of speech, he is almost as 
weak for breasting the strong cuiTent of Hfe as when 
a boy. America is but a poor place for the romantic 
book-dreamer. The demands of this new, Western 
life of ours are practical and earnest. Prompt 
action, and ready tact, are the weapons by which to 
meet it, and subdue it. The education of the 
cloister offers at best only a sound starting-point 
from which to leap into the tide. 

The father of Clarence is a cool, matter-of-fact 
man. He has little sympathy with any of the ro- 
mantic notions that enthrall a youth of twenty. He 



FIRST LOOK AT THE WORLD. 145 

has a very liumble opinion — much humbler than 
you think he should have — of youi* attainments at 
college. He achdses a short period of travel, that 
by observation you may find out more fully how that 
world is made up with which you are henceforth to 
stiniggle. 

Tour mother half fears your alienation from the 
affections of home. Her letters all run over with a 
tenderness that makes you sigh, and that makes you 
feel a deep reproach. You may not have been 
wanting in the more ordinary tokens of affection ; 
you have made your periodic visits ; but you blush 
for the consciousness that fastens on you of neglect 
at heart. You blush for the lack of that glow of 
feeling which once fastened to every home-object. 

[Does a man indeed outgrow affections as his mind 
ripens ? Do the early and tender sympathies become 
a part of his intellectual perceptions, to be appre- 
ciated and reasoned upon as one reasons about 
truths of science ? Is their vitality necessarily young? 
Is there the same ripe, joyous burst of the heart at 
the recollection of later friendships, which belonged 
to those of boyhood ; and are not the later ones 
more the suggestions of judgment, and less the ab- 
solute conditions of the heart's health ?] 

The letters of your mother, as I said, make you 
sigh : there is no moment in our lives when we feel 
10 



146 DREAM-LIFE. 

less worthy of the love of others, and less worthy of 
our own respect, than when we receive evidences of 
kindness which we know we do not merit, — and 
when souls are laid bare to us, and we have too 
much indifference to lay bare our o\mi in return. 

"Clarence," — writes that neglected mother, — 
"you do not know how much you are in our 
thoughts, and how often you are the burden of my 
prayers. Oh, Clarence, I could almost wish that 
you were still a boy, — still running to me for those 
little favors which I was only too happy to bestow, 
— still dependent in some degree on your mother's 
love for happiness. 

"Perhaps I do you wrong, Clarence; but it does 
seem from the changing tone of your letters, that 
j^ou are becoming more and more forgetful of us all ; 
that you are feeling less need of our advice, and — 
what I feel far more deeply — less need of our affec- 
tion. Do not, my son, forget the lessons of home. 
There will come a time, I feel sure, when you will 
know that those lessons are good. They may not 
indeed help you in that intellectual strife which 
soon wiU engross you ; and the}^ may not have 
fitted you to shine in what are called the brilliant 
circles of the world, but they are such, Clarence, 
as make the heart pure and honest and strong. 

" You may think me weak to write you thus, as I 



FIRST LOOK AT THE WORLD. 147 

would have written to my liglit-hearted boy years 
ago ; indeed I am not strong, but growing every day 
more feeble. 

"Nelly, your sweet sister, is sitting by me. 
' Tell Clarence,' she says, ' to come home soon.' 
You know, my son, what hefirty welcome will greet 
you ; and that, whether here or away, our love and 
prayers will be with jou always ; and may God in 
his infinite mercy keep you from all harm ! " 

A smile — a sigh perhaps — and these hurried 
away as soon as they come — are all that youth 
gives to embalm such treasure of love. A gay laugh, 
or the challenge of some companion of a day, will 
sweep away into the night the earnest, regi-etful, 
yet happy dreams that rise like incense from the 
pages of such hallowed affection. 

The binisque world too is to be met, with all its 
hurry and promptitude. Manhood, in our swift 
American life, is measured too much by forgetful- 
ness of all the sweet bonds which tie the heart to 
the home of its first attachments. We deaden the 
glow that nature has kindled, lest it may lighten 
our hearts into an enchanting flame of weakness. 
We have not learned to make that flame the beacon 
of our jDurposes and the warmer of our strength. 
We are men too early. 

But an experience is approaching Clarence, that 



148 DREAM-LIFE, 

will drive his heart home for shelter, like a wounded 
bird. 

It is an autumn morning, with such crim- 
son glories to kindle it as lie along the twin ranges 
of mountain that guard the Hudson. The white 
frosts shine like changing silk on the fields of late- 
growing clover ; the river-mists curl, and idle along 
the bosom of the water, and creep up the hillsides, 
and at noon float their feathery vapors aloft in 
clouds ; the crimson trees blaze in the side valleys, 
and blend their vermilion tints under the fairy 
hands of our American frost-painters with the dark 
blood of the ash-trees and the orange-tinted oaks. 
Blue and bright under the clear Fall heaven, the 
broad river shines before the surging prow of the 
boat like a shield of steel. 

The bracing air Hghts up rich dreams of hfe. 
Your fancy peoples the valleys and the hill-tops with 
its creations ; and your hope lends some crowning 
beauty of the landscape to your dreamy future. 
The vision of youi' last college year is not gone. 
That figure, whose elegance your eyes then feasted 
on, still floats before you ; and the memory of the 
last talk with Laura is as vivid as if it were only yester- 
day that you listened. Indeed this opening campaign 
of travel — although you are half ashamed to confess 
it to yourself — is guided by the thought of her. 



FIRST LOOK AT THE WORLD. 149 

Dalton with a party of friends, his sister among 
them, is journeying to the north. A hope of meet- 
ing them — scarce acknowledged as an intention — 
spui'S you on. The eye rests dreamily and vaguely 
on the beauties that appear at every turn : they are 
beauties that charm you, and charm you the more 
by an indefinable association with that fauy object 
that floats before you, half unknown, and wholly un- 
claimed. The quiet to-WTis with their noonday still- 
ness, the outlpng mansions with their stately splen- 
dor, the bustHng cities with their mocking din, and 
the long reaches of silent and wooded shore, chime 
with theu' several beauties to your heart, in keeping 
with the master-key that was touched long weeks 
before. 

The cool, honest advices of the father drift across 
your memory in shadowy forms, as you wander 
through the streets of the first northern cities ; and 
all the need for observation, and the incentives to 
purpose, which your ambitious designs would once 
have quickened, fade dismally when you find that 
she is not there. All the lax gayety of Saratoga 
palls on the appetite ; even the magnificent shores 
of Lake George, though stirring yoiu' spirit to an 
insensible wonder and love, do not cheat you into a 
trance that lingers. In vain the sun blazons every 
isle, and lights every shaded cove, and at evening 



I50 DREAM-LTFE. 

stretches the Black Mountain in giant slumber on 
the waters. 

Your thought bounds away from the beauty of 
sky and lake, and fastens upon the ideal which 
your dreamy humors cherish. The very glow of 
pursuit heightens your fervor, — a fervor that dims 
sadly the new-wakened memories of home. The 
southern gates of Champlain, those fir-draped Tros- 
achs of America, are passed, and you find yourself, 
upon a golden evening of Canadian autumn, in the i 
quaint old city of Montreal. 

Dalton with his party has gone down to Quebec. 
He is to retui-n within a few days on his way to 
Niagara. There is a letter from Nelly awaiting you. 
It says: — "Mother is much more feeble: she 
often speaks of your return in a way that I am sure, 
if you heard, Clarence, would bring you back to us 
soon." 

There is a struggle in your mind : old affection is 
weaker than yoimg pride and hope. Moreover, the 
world is to be faced ; the new scenes around you 
are to be studied. An answer is penned full of 
kind remembrances, and begging a few days of de- 
lay. You wander, wondering, under the quaint old 
houses, and wishing for the return of Dalton. 

He meets you with that happy, careless way of 
his, — the dangerous way which some men are born 



FIRST LOOK AT THE WORLD. 151 

to, and which chimes easily to every tone of the 
■world, — a way you wondered at once ; a way you 
admire now ; and a way that you will distrust as 
you come to see more of men. Miss Dalton — (it 
seems sacrilege to call her Laura) — is the same 
elegant being that entranced you on the college 
walks. 

They urge you to join their party. But there is 
no need of urging : those eyes, that figure, the 
whole presence indeed of Miss Dalton, attract you 
with a power which you can neither explain nor re- 
sist. One look of grace enslaves you ; and there is 
a strange pride in the enslavement. 

Is it dream, or is it earnest — those moonlit 

walks upon the hills that skirt the cit}^ when you 
watch the stars, listening to her voice, and feel the 
pressure of that jewelled hand upon your arm ? — 
when you drain your memory of its whole stock of 
jioetic beauties to lavish upon her ear ? Is it love, 
or is it madness, when you catch her eye as it 
beams more of eloquence than lies in all your 
moonlight poetry, and feel an exultant gush of the 
heart that makes you proud as a man, and yet timid 
as a boy, beside her ? 

Has Dalton, with that calm, placid, nonchalant 
look of his, any inkling of the rajDtures which his 
elegant sister is exciting? Has the stout, elderly 



152 DREAM-LIFE. 

gentleman, who is so prodigal of his bouquets and 
attentions, any idea of the formidable rival that he 
has found ? Has Laura herself — you dream — 
any conception of that intensity of admiration with 
which you worship ? 

Poor Clarence ! it is his first look at Life ! 

The Thousand Isles with their leafy beauties lie 
around your passing boat, like the joys that skirt 
us, and pass us, on our way through life. The 
Thousand Isles rise sudden before you, and fiinge 
your yeasty track, and drop away into floating spec- 
tres of beauty, of haze, of distance, like those 
dreams of joy that your passion lends the brain. 
The low banks of Ontario look sullen by night ; and 
the moon, rising tranquilly over the tops of vast 
forests that stand in majestic ranks over ten thou- 
sand acres of shore-land, drips its silvery sparkles 
along the rocking waters, and flashes across your 
foamy wake. 

With such attendance, that subdues for the time 
the dreamy forays of your passion, you draw to- 
ward the sound of Niagara ; and its distant, vague 
roar, coming through great aisles of gloomy forests, 
bears up your spirit, like a child's, into the Highest 
Presence. 

The morning after, you are standing with your 
party upon the steps of the hotel. A letter is 



FIRST LOOK AT THE WORLD. 153 

handed to you ; Dalton remarks in a quizzical way, 
that *' it shows a lady's hand." 

" Aha, a lady ! " says Miss Dalton, — and so 

" A sister," I say ; for it is Nelly's hand. 

*' By the by, Clarence," says Dalton, " it was a 
very pretty sister you gave us a glimpse of at Com- 
mencement." 

" Ah, you think so ; " and there is something in 
your tone that shows a little indignation at this 
careless mention of your fond Nelly ; and from 
those lips. It will occur to you again. 

A single glance at the letter blanches your cheek. 
Your heart throbs — throbs harder — throbs tumul- 
tuously. You bite your lip, for there are lookers- 
on. But it will not do. You hurry away ; you find 
your chamber ; you close and lock the door, and 
burst into a flood of tears. 



A BroTcen Home. 

IT is Nelly's own fair hand, yet sadly blotted, — 
blotted with her tears, and blotted with yours. 

"It is all over, dear, dear Clarence ! Oh, 

how I wish you were here to mourn with us ! I 
can hardly now believe that our poor mother is in- 
deed dead." 

Dead ! It is a terrible word. You repeat 

it with a fresh burst of grief. The letter is crum- 
pled in your hand. Unfold it again, sobbing, and 
read on. 

" For a week she had been failing every day ; 
but on Saturday we thought her very much better. 
I told her I felt sure she would live to see you 
again. 

" ' I shall never see him again, Nelly,' said she." 

Ah, Clarence, where is your youthful pride, 



A BROKEN HOME, 155 

and your strength now — with only that frail pa- 
per to annoy you, crushed in your grasp ? 

"She sent for father, and taking his hand in 
hers, told him she was dying. I am glad you did 
not see his grief. I was kneeling beside her, and 
she put her hand upon my head, and let it rest 
there for a moment, while her lips moved as if she 
were praying. 

"'Kiss me, Nelly,' said she, growing fainter; 
* kiss me again for Clarence.' 

" A little while after she died." 

For a long time you remain with only that letter, 
and your thought, for company. You pace up and 
do^m your chamber : again you seat yourseK, and 
lean your head upon the table, enfeebled by the 
very grief that you cherish still. The whole day 
passes thus : you excuse yourself from all compan- 
ionship : you have not the heart to tell the story of 
your troubles to Dalton, — least of all, to Miss Dal- 
ton. How is this? Is soitow too selfish, or too 
holy? 

Toward nightfall there is a calmer and stronger 
feeling. The voice of the present world comes to 
your ear again. But you move away from it unob- 
served to that stronger voice of God in the Cataract. 
Great masses of angry cloud hang over the west ; 
but beneath them the red harvest sun shines on 



J $6 ' DREAM-LIFE. 

the long reach of Canadian shore, and bathes the 
whh'ling rapids in splendor. You stroll alone over 
the quaking bridge, and under the giant trees of 
the Island, to the edge of the British Fall. You go 
out to the little shattered tower, and gaze down, 
with sensations that will last till death, upon the 
deep emerald of those awful masses of water. 

It is not the place for a bad man to ponder ; it is 
not the atmosphere for foul thoughts, or weak ones. 
A man is never better than when he has the hum- 
blest sense of himself : he is never so unlike the 
spirit of Evil as when his pride is utterly vanished. 
You linger looking upon the stream of fading sun- 
light that plays across the rapids, and down into 
the shadow of the depths below, lit up with their 
clouds of spray ; — yet farther down, your sight 
swims upon the black eddying masses, with white 
ribbons streaming across their glassy surface ; and 
your dizzy eye fastens upon the frail cockle-shells — 
their stout oarsmen dwindled to pygmies — that 
dance like atoms upon the vast chasm, or like your 
own weak resolves upon the whirl of Time. 

Your thought, growing broad in the view, seems 
to cover the whole area of Hfe : you set up your af- 
fections and your duties ; you build hopes with 
fairy scenery, and away they all go, tossing like the 
relentless waters to the deep gulf that gapes a hid- 



A BROKEN HOME. 157 

eous welcome. You sigh at your weakness of heart, 
or of endeavor, and your sighs float out into the 
breeze, that rises ever from the shock of the waves, 
and whirl, empty-handed, to Heaven. You avow 
high puqDOses, and clench them with round utter- 
ance ; and your voice, Hke a sparrow's, is caught up 
in the roar of the fall, and thrown at you from 
the cliffs, and dies away in the solemn thun- 
ders of nature. Great thoughts of life come over 
you — of its work and destiny — of its affections 
and duties, and roll down swift — like the river — 
into the deep whirl of doubt and danger. Other 
thoughts, grander and stronger, like the continuing 
rush of waters, come over you, and knit your pur- 
poses together with theu* weight, and crush you to 
exultant tears, and then leap, shattered and broken, 
from the very edge of your intent into mists of fear. 
The moon comes out, and gleaming through the 
clouds, braids its light fantastic bow upon the 
waters. You feel calmer as the night deepens. 
The darkness softens you ; it hangs — like the pall 
that shrouds your mother's corpse — low and hea\ily 
to your heart. It helps your inward grief with some 
outward show. It makes the earth a moui'ner ; it 
makes the flashing water-drops so many attendant 
mourners. It makes the Great Fall itself a mourner, 
and its roar a requiem. 



158 DREAM-LIFE. 

The pleasure of travel is cut short. To one person 
of the little company of fellow-voyagers you bid 
adieu with regret ; pride, love, and hope point 
toward her, while all the gentler affections stray back 
to the broken home. Her smile of parting is very 
gracious ; but it is not, after all, such a smile as 
your warm heart pines for. 

Ten days after, you are walking toward the old 
homestead with such feelings as it never called up 
before. In the days of boyhood there were trium- 
phant thoughts of the gladness and the pride with 
which, when grown to the stature of manhood, you 
would come back to that little town of your birth. 
As you have bent with your sturdy resolution over 
the tasks of the cloister life, swift thoughts have 
flocked on you of the proud step, and prouder heart, 
with which you would one day greet the old acquain- 
tances of boyhood ; and you have regaled yourself 
on the jaunty manner with which you would meet 
old Dr. Bidlow, and the patronizing air with which 
you would addi-ess the pretty, blue-eyed Madge. 

It is late afternoon when you come in sight of the 
tall sycamores that shade your home ; you shudder 
now, lest you may meet any whom you once knew. 
The first keen grief of youth seeks little of the sym- 
pathy of companions : it lies — with a sensitive man 
— bounded within the narrowest circles of the heart. 



A BROKEN HOME, 159 

They only who hold the key to its innermost recesses 
can speak consolation. Years will make a change ; 
— as the Summer grows in fierce heats, the balminess 
of the violet banks of Spiing is lost in the odors of 
a thousand flowers ; — the heart, as it gains in age, 
loses freshness, but wins breadth. 

Throw a pebble into the brook at its source, 

and the agitation is terrible, and the ripples chafe 
madly their narrowed banlvs ; throw in a pebble when 
the brook has become a river, and you see a few 
circles, widening and widening and widening, until 
they are lost in the gentle every-day murmur of its 
life. 

You draw your hat over your eyes, as you walk 
toward the familiar door : the yard is silent ; the 
night is falling gloomily ; a few katydids are crying 
in the trees. The mother's window, where at such a 
season as this it was her custom to sit watching your 
play, is shut, and the blinds are closed over it. The 
honeysuckle, which grew over the window, and which 
she loved so much, has flung out its branches care- 
lessly ; and the spiders have hung their foul nets 
upon its tendrils. 

And she, who made that home so dear to your 
boyhood, so real to your after-years, — standing 
amid all the flights of your youthful ambition, and 
your paltry cares (for they seem paltry now), and 



i6o DREAM-LIFE, 

your doubts, and anxieties and weaknesses of heart, 
like the Hght of your hope — burning ever there 
under the shadow of the sycamores, — a holy 
beacon, by whose guidance you always came to a 
sweet haven, and to a refuge from all your toils, — 
is gone, — gone forever. 

The father is there indeed, — beloved, respected, 
esteemed ; but the boyish heart, whose old life is 
now reviving, leans more readily and more kindly 
into that void where once beat the heart of a mother. 

Nelly is there, — cherished now with all the added 
love that is stricken off from her who has left you 
forever. Nelly meets you at the door. 

"Clarence!" 

''Nelly!" 

There are no other words ; but you feel her tears 
as the kiss of welcome is given. With your hand 
joined in hers, you walk down the hall into the old, 
familiar room, — not with the jaunty college step, — 
not with any presumption on your dawning man-, 
hood, — oh, no, — nothing of this. 

Quietly, meekly, feeling your whole heart shat- 
tered, and your mind feeble as a boy's, and your 
purposes nothing, and worse than nothing, — with 
only one proud feeling you fling your arm around 
the form of that gentle sister, — the pride of a pro- 
tector, — the feehng — ''/will care for you now, dear 



A BROKEN HOME. i6i 

Nelly!" — that is all. And even that, proud as it is, 
brings weakness. 

You sit down together upon the lounge ; Nelly 
buries her face in her hands, sobbing. 

" Dear Nelly ! " and your arm clasps her more 
fondly. 

There is a cricket in the corner of the room, chirp- 
ing very loudly. It seems as if nothing else were 
living, — only Nelly, Clarence, and the noisy cricket. 
Your eye falls on the chair where she used to sit ; it 
is drawn up with the same care as ever beside the 
fire. 

"I am 80 glad to see you, Clarence," says Nelly, 
recovering herself ; and there is a sweet, sad smile 
now. And sitting there beside you, she tells you of 
it all, — of the day, and of the hour, — and how she 
looked, — and of her last prayer, and how happy she 
was. 

"And did she leave no message for me, Nelly?" 

" Not to forget us, Clarence ; but you could not ! " 

"Thank you, Nelly. And was there nothing 
else?" 

" Yes, Clarence, — to meet her one day ! " 

You only press her hand. 

Presently your father comes in ; he greets you 

vrith far more than his usual cordiahty. He keeps 

your hand a long time, looking quietly in your face, 
II 



1 62 DREAM-LIFE. 

as if lie were reading traces of some resemblance 
that had never struck liim before. 

The father is one of those calm, impassive men, 
who shows little upon the surface, and whose feel- 
ings you have always thought cold. But now there 
is a tremulousness in his tones that you never re- 
member observing before. He seems conscious of 
it himself, and forbears talking. He goes to his old 
seat, and after gazing at you a Httle while with the 
same steadfastness as at first, leans forward, and 
buries his face in his hands. 

From that very moment you feel a sympathy and 
a love for him, that you have never known until then. 
And in after years, when suffering or trial come over 
you, and when your thoughts fly as to a refuge to 
that shattered home, you will recall that stooping 
image of the father, — with his head bowed, and 
from time to time trembhng convulsively with giief, 
— and feel that there remains yet by the household 
fires a heart of kindred love and of kindred sorrow. 

Nelly steals away from you gently, and stepping 
across the room, lays her hand upon his shoulder 
with a touch that says, as plainly as words could say 
it, — "We are here, father!" 

And he rouses himseK, — passes his arm around 
her, — looks in her face fondly, — draws her to him, 
and prints a kiss upon her forehead. 



A BROKEN HOME. 163 

" Nelly, we must love each other now more than 
ever." 

Nelly's lips tremble, but she cannot answer ; a 
tear or two go stealing down her cheek. 

You approach them ; and your father takes your 
hand again with a firm grasp, — looks at you thought- 
fully, — drops his eyes upon the fire, and for a mo- 
ment there is a pause ; — ''We are quite alone now, 
my son ! " 

It is a Broken Home. 



VI 

Family Confidence. 

GRIEF has a strange power in opening the 
hearts of those who sorrow in common. The 
father, who has seemed to you, not so much neglect- 
ful, as careless of your aims and purposes, — toward 
whom there have been in your younger years yearn- 
ings of affection which his chilliness of manner has 
seemed to repress, now grows imder the sad light of 
the broken household into a friend. The heart feels 
a joy it cannot express, in its freedom to love and to 
show its affection. There is a pleasure wholly new 
to you in telling him of your youthful projects, in 
Hstening to his questionings, in seeking his opinions, 
and in yielding to his judgment. 

It is a sad thing for the child, and quite as unfor- 
tunate for the pai-ent, when this confidence is un- 
known. Many and many a time with a bursting 



FAMILY CONFIDENCE. 165 

heart you have longed to tell him of some boyish 
grief, or to ask his guidance out of some boyish 
trouble ; but at the first sight of that calm, inflexible 
face, and at the first sound of his measured words, 
your enthusiastic yearnings toward his love and his 
counsels have all turned back upon themselves, and 
you have gone away to hide in secret the disappoint- 
ment which the lack of his sympathy has made 
active and bitter. 

But now, over the tomb of her, for whom you 
weep in common, there is a new light breaking ; and 
your only fear is lest you weary him with what 
may seem a l^arren show of your youthful confi- 
dences. 

Nelly too is nearer now than ever ; and with her 
you have no fears for your demonstrativeness of 
speech ; you listen delightedly there by the evening 
flame to all that she tells you of the neighbors of 
your boyhood. You shudder somewhat at her 
genial praises of the blue-eyed Madge, — a shudder 
that you can hardly account for, and which you do 
not seek to explain. It may be that there is a cHng- 
ing and tender memory yet — wakened by the home 
atmosphere — of the divided sixpence. 

Of your quondam friend, Frank, the pleasant re- 
collection of whom revives again under the old roof- 
tree, she tells you very little, — and that little in a 



1 66 DREAM-LIFE. 

hesitating and indifferent way that utterly surprises 
you. Can it be, you think, that there has been some 
cause of unkindness ? 

Clarence is stiU very young ! 

The fire glows warmly upon the accustomed 
hearth-stone, and — save that vacant place never to be 
filled again — a home cheer reigns even in this time 
of your mourning. The spirit of the lost parent 
seems to linger over the remnant of the household ; 
and the Bible upon its stand — the book she loved so 
well — the book so sadly forgotten — seems still to 
open on you its promises in her sweet tones, and to 
call you, as it were, with her angel- voice to the land 
that she inherits. 

And when late night has come, and the household 
is quiet, you call up in the darkness of your chamber 
that other night of grief which followed upon the 
death of Charlie. That was the boy's vision of 
death ; and this is the youthful vision. Yet essen- 
tially there is but little difference. Death levels the 
capacities of the living as it levels the strength of its 
victims. It is as grand to the man as to the boy ; 
its teachings are as deep for age as for infancy. 

You may learn its manner, and estimate its ap- 
proaches ; but when it comes, it comes always with 
the same awful front that it wore to your boyhood. 
Keason and Revelation may point to rich issues that 



FAMILY CONFIDENCE, 167 

unfold from its very darkness ; yet all these are no 
more to your bodily sense, and no more to your 
enlightened hope, than those fore shado wings of peace 
which rest like a halo on the spirit of the child as he 
prays in guileless tones — Our Father, who art in 
Heaven. 

It is a holy and a placid grief that rests upon you, 
— not crushing, but bringing to life from the grave 
of boyhood all its better and nobler instincts. In 
their light your wild plans of youth look sadly mis- 
shapen, and in the impulse of the hour you abandon 
them ; worthier resolves take hold upon you and 
exalt you ; ^^our purposes seem bathed in goodness. 
There is an effervescence of the spirit that carries 
away all foul matter, and leaves you in a state of calm 
that seems kindred to the land and to the life whither 
the sainted mother has gone. 

This calm brings a smile in the midst of grief, and 
an inward looking and leaning toward that Eternal 
Power which governs and guides us ; — with that 
smile and that leaning, sleep comes like an angelic 
minister, and fondles your wearied frame and thought 
into that repose which if it be endless, we call Death. 

Poor Clarence : he is hke the rest of the 

world, — whose goodness lies chiefly in the occasional 
throbs of a better nature, which soon subside, and 
leave them upon the old level of desire. 



i68 DREAM-LIFE. 

As you lie between waking and sleeping, you have 
a fancy of a sound at your door ; — it seems to open 
softly, and the tall figure of your father, wrapped in 
his dressing-gown, stands over you, and gazes — as 
he gazed at you before ; — his look is very mournful ; 
and he murmurs your mother's name — and sighs 
— and looks again — and passes out. 

At morning you cannot tell if it was real or a 
dream. Those higher resolves too, which grief and 
the night made, seem very vague and shadowy. 
Life with its ambitious and cankerous desires wakes 
again. You do not feel them at first ; the subjuga- 
tion of holy thoughts and of reaches toward the In- 
finite, leave their traces on you, and perhaps bewilder 
you into a half-consciousness of strength. But at 
the first touch of the grosser elements about you, 
— ^ on your very first entrance upon those duties Avhich 
quicken pride or shame, and which are pointing at 
j'^ou from every quarter, — your hoty calm, your high- 
born purpose, your spiritual cleavings, pass away, 
like the electricity of August storms drawn down by 
the thousand glittering turrets of a city. 

The world is stronger than the night ; and the 
bindings of sense are tenfold stronger than the most 
exquisite delirium of soul. This makes you feel, or 
will one day make you feel, that life, — strong life 
and sound life, — that life which lends approaches to 



FAMILY CONFIDENCE. 169 

the Infinite, and takes hold on Heaven, is not so 
much a Progress as it is a Resistance. 

There is one special confidence, which in all your 
talk about plans and purposes, you do not give to 
your father : you resei*ve that for the ear of Nelly 
alone. Why happens it that a father is almost the 
last confidant that a son makes in any matter deeply 
affecting the feelings ? Is it the fear that a 
father may regard such matter as boyish ? Is it a 
lingering suspicion of your own childishness ; or a 
mark of that extreme of affection which reduces you 
to childishness ? 

Why is it that a man, of whatever age or con- 
dition, forbears to exhibit to those whose respect for 
his judgment and mental abilities he seeks only, the 
more tender qualities of the heart, and those in- 
tenser susceptibilities to love which underlie his 
nature, and which give a color in spite of him to the 
habit of his life ? Why is he so morbidly anxious to 
keep out of sight any extravagances of affection, 
when he blurts officiously to the world his extrava- 
gances of action and of thought ? Can any lover ex- 
plain me this ? 

Again, why is a sister the one of aU others to 
whom you first whisper the dawnings of any strong 
emotion, — as if it were a weakness that her charity 
alone could cover ? 



I70 DREAM-LIFE. 

However this may be, you have a long story for 
Nelly's ear. It is some days after your return : you 
are strolling down a quiet, wooded lane, — a remem- 
bered place, — when you first open to her your heart. 
Your talk is of Laura Dalton. You describe her to 
Nelly with the extravagance of a glowing hope. You 
picture those quahties that have attracted you 
most ; you dwell upon her beauty, her elegant figure, 
her grace of conversation, her accomplishments. 
You make a study that feeds your passion as you go 
on. You rise by the very glow of your speech into 
a frenzy of feeling that she has never excited before. 
You are quite sure that you would be wretched and 
miserable without her. 

" Do you mean to marry her?" says Nelly. 

It is a question that gives a swift bound to the 
blood of youth. It involves the idea of possession, 
and of the dependence of the cherished one upon 
your own arm and strength. But the admu-ation 
you entertain seems almost too lofty for this ; Nelly's 
question makes you diffident of reply ; and you lose 
yourself in a new story of those excellencies of 
speech and of figure which have so charmed you. 

Nelly's eye on a sudden becomes fuU of tears. 

"Whatisit, NeUy?" 

"Our mother, Clarence." 
The word and the thought dampen your ardor ; 



FAMILY CONFIDENCE, 171 

the sweet watchfulness and gentle kindness of that 
parent for an instant make a sad contrast with the 
showy qualities you have been naming ; and the 
spirit of that mother — called up by Nelly's words — 
seems to hang over you with an anxious love that 
subdues all your pride of passion. 

But this passes; and now — half believing that 
Nelly's thoughts have run over the same ground with 
yours — you turn special pleader for your fancy. 
You argue for the beauty which you just now af- 
firmed ; you do your utmost to win over Nelly to 
some burst of admiration. Yet there she sits beside 
you, thoughtfully and half sadly, playing with the 
frail autumn flowers that grow at her side. What 
can she be thinking ? You ask it by a look. 

She smiles, — takes your hand, for she will not let 
you grow angry, — 

" I was thinking, Clarence, whether this Laura 
Dalton would, after all, make a good wife, — such an 
one as you would love always ? " 



YET. 

A Good Wife. 

rriHE thouglit of Nelly suggests new dreams that 
-■- are little apt to find place in the rhapsodies of 
a youthful lover. The very epithet of a good wife 
mates tamely with the romantic fancies of a first pas- 
sion. It is measuring the ideal by too practical a 
standard. It sweeps away all the delightful vague- 
ness of a fairy dream of love, and reduces one to a 
dull and economic estimate of actual qualities. 
Passion lives above all analysis and estimate, and 
arrives at its conclusions by intuition. 

Did Petrarch ever think if Laura would make a 
good wife ; did Oswald ever think it of Corinne ? 
Nay, did even the more practical Waverley ever think 
it of the impassioned Flora ? Would it not weaken 
faith in their romantic passages, if you believed it ? 
"What have such vulgar, practical issues to do with 



A GOOD WIFE. 173 

that passion which sublimates the faculties, and 
makes the loving dreamer to live in an ideal sphere 
where nothing but goodness and brightness can 



come 



Nelly is to be pitied for entertaining such a 
thought ; and yet Nelly is very good and kind. 
Her affections are without doubt all centred in the 
remnant of the shattered home ; she has never 
known any further and deeper love ; never once fan- 
cied it even — 

Ah, Clarence, you are very young ! 

And yet there are some things that puzzle you 
in Nelly. You have found accidentally, in one of 
her treasured books, — a book that lies almost always 
on her dressing-table, — a little withered flower with 
its stem in a slip of paper, and on the paper the 
initials of — your old friend Frank. You recall, in 
connection with this, her indisposition to talk of him 
on the first evening of your return. It seems — you 
scarce know why — that these are the tokens of 
something very like a leaning of the heart. It 
does occur to you that she too may have her httle 
casket of loves ; and you try one day very adroitly 
to take a look into this casket. 

You will learn later in life that the heart of a 

modest, gentle girl is a very hard matter for even a 
brother to probe ; it is at once the most tender and 



174 DREAM-LIFE. 

the most unapproachable of all fastnesses. It ad- 
mits feeling by armies, with great trains of artillery, 
— but not a single scout. It is as calm and pure 
as polar snows ; but deep underneath, where no 
footsteps have gone, and where no eye can reach 
but one, hes the warm and the throbbing earth. 

Make what you will of the slight, quivering 
blushes, and of the half broken expressions, — 
more you cannot get. The love that a delicate- 
minded girl will tell is a short-sighted and outside 
love ; but the love that she cherishes without voice 
or token is a love that will mould her secret sym- 
pathies, and her deepest, fondest yearnings, either 
to a quiet world of joy, or to a world of placid suf- 
ferance. The true voice of her love she will keep 
back long and late, fearful ever of her most prized 
jewel, — fearful to strange sensitiveness ; she will 
show kindness, but the opening of the real flood- 
gates of the heart and the utterance of those im- 
passioned yearnings which belong to its nature, 
come far later. 

That deep, thrilUng voice, bearing all the perfume 
of the womanly soul in its flow, rarely finds utter- 
ance ; and if uttered vainly, — if called out by tempt- 
ing devices, and by a trust that is abused, — deso- 
late indeed is the maiden heart, widowed of its 
chastest thought. The soul shrinks affrighted with- 



A GOOD WIFE. 175 

in itself. Like a tired bird lost at sea, fluttering 
around what seem friendly boughs, it stoops at 
length, and finding only cold, slippery spars, with 
no bloom and no foliage, — its last hope gone, — it 
sinks to a wild ocean grave. 

Nelly — and the thought brings a mist of sym- 
pathy to your eye — must have such a heart ; it 
speaks in every shadow of her action. And this 
very delicacy seems to lend her a charm that would 
make her a wife to be loved and honored. 

Ay, there is something in that maidenly modesty 
— retiring from you as you advance, retreating 
timidly from all bold approaches, fearful and yet 
joyous — which wins upon the iron hardness of a 
man's nature like a rising flame. To force of action 
and resolve he opposes force ; to strong will he 
mates his own ; pride Hghts pride ; but to the 
gentleness of the true womanly character he yields 
with a gush of tenderness that nothing else can call 
out. He will never be subjugated on his own 
gi'ound of action and energy ; but let him be lured 
to that border country over which the delicacy and 
fondness of a womanly nature presides, and his 
energy yields, his haughty determination faints ; he 
is proud of submission. 

With this thought of modesty and gentleness to 
illuminate your dream of an ideal wife, you chase the 



176 DREAM-LIFE, 

pleasant phantom to that shadowy home — lying far 
off in the future — of which she is the glory and the 
crown. I know it is the fashion nowadays with 
many to look for a woman's excellencies and influ- 
ence — aw^ay from her home ; but I know too that a 
^ vast many eager and hopeful hearts still cherish the 
behef that her virtues will range highest and live 
longest within those sacred walls. 

Where, indeed, can the modest and earnest virtue 
of a woman tell a stronger story of its worth than 
upon the dawning habit of a child ? Where can her 
grace of character win a higher and a riper effect 
than upon the action of her household? What 
mean those noisy declaimers who talk of the fee- 
ble influence, and of the crushed faculties, of a 
woman ? 

What school of learning, or of moral endeavor, 
\. depends more on its teacher, than the home upon 
the mother ? What influence of all the world's pro- 
v^ fessors and teachers tells so strongly on the habit 
of a man's mind as those gentle droppings from a 
mother's lips, w^hich, day by day and hour by hour, 
grow into the enlarging stature of his soul, and live 
with it forever ? They can hardly be mothers who 
believe in a broader and a noisier field ; they must 
have forgotten to be daughters ; have they lost all 
hope of being wives ? 






A GOOD WIFE. 177 

Be this how it may, the heart of a man with 
whom affection is not a name, and love a mere pas- 
sion of the hour, yearns toward the quiet of a home 
as toward the goal of his earthly joy and hope. 
And as you fasten there your thought, an indulgent 
yet dreamy fancy paints the loved image that is to 
adorn it and to make it sacred. 

She is there to bid you God speed ! and an 

adieu that hangs Hke music on your ear as you go 
out to the every-day labor of life. At evening she is 
there to greet you, as you come back wearied with a 
day's toil ; and her look so full of gladness cheats 
you of your fatigue ; and she steals her arm around 
you with a touch of welcome that beams like sun- 
shine on her brow, and that fills your heart with a 
twin gratitude — to her and Heaven. 

She is not unmindful of those old-fashioned vir- 
tues of cleanHness and of order which give an air of 
quiet, and which secure content. Your wants are 
all anticipated : the fire is burning brightly ; the 
clean hearth flashes under the joyous blaze ; the old 
elbow-chair is in its place. Your very unworthiness 
of all this haunts you like an accusing spirit, and 
yet penetrates your heart with a new devotion to- 
ward the loved one who is thus watchful of your 
comfort. 

She is gentle, — keeping your love, as she has 

12 



178 DREAM-LIFE. 

won it, by a thousand nameless and modest virtues 
which radiate from her whole life and action. She 
steals upon your affections like a summer wind 
breathing softly over sleeping valleys. She gains a 
mastery over your sterner nature by very contrast, 
and wins you unwittingly to her lightest wish. 
And yet her wishes are guided by that delicate tact 
which avoids conflict with your manly pride ; she 
subdues by seeming to yield. By a single soft 
wor4 of appeal she robs your vexation of its anger ; 
and, 'with a slight touch of that fair hand, and one 
pleading look of that earnest eye, she disarms your 
sternest pride. 

She is kind, — shedding her kindness as heaven 
sheds dew. Who indeed could doubt it ? — least of 
all you, who are living on her kindness day by day, 
as flowers live on light ? There is none of that offi- 
cious parade which blunts the point of benevolence ; 
but she tempers every action with a blessing. If 
trouble has come upon you, she knows that her 
voice, beguiling you into cheerfulness, will lay your 
fears ; and as she draws her chair beside you, she 
knows that the tender and confiding way with which 
she takes your hand, and looks up into your earnest 
face, will drive away from your annoyance all its 
weight. As she lingers, leading off your thought 
with pleasant words, she knows well that she is re- 



A GOOD WIFE. 179 

deeming you from care, and soothing you to that 
sweet calm which such home and such wife can 
alone bestow. And in sickness, — sickness that you 
almost covet for the sympathy it brings, — that 
hand of hers resting on your fevered forehead, or 
those fingers playing with the scattered locks, are 
more full of kindness than the loudest vaunt of 
friends ; and when your failing strength will permit 
no more, you grasp that cherished hand with a ful- 
ness of joy, of thankfulness, and of love, which your 
tears only can tell. 

She is good ; her hopes live where the angels Hve. 
Her kindness and gentleness are sweetly tempered 
mth that meekness and forbearance which are born 
of Faith. Trust comes into her heart as rivers come 
to the sea. And in the dark hours of doubt and 
foreboding you rest fondly upon her buoyant Faith, 
as the treasure of your common life ; and in your 
holier musings you look to that frail hand, and that 
gentle spirit, to lead you away from the vanities of 
worldly ambition to the fulness of that joy which 
the good inherit. 

Is Laura Dalton such an one ? 



vm. 

A Broke?! Hope. 

YOUTHFUL passion is a giant. It overleaps all 
the dreams, and all the resolves of our better 
and quieter nature, and drives madly toward some 
wild issue, that lives only in its frenzy. How little 
account does passion take of goodness ! It is not 
within the cycle of its revolution : it is below ; it is 
tamer ; it is older ; it wears no wings. 

And your proud heart flashing back to the mem- 
ory of that sparkling eye which lighted your hope — 
full-fed upon the vanities of cloister learning, drives 
your soberer visions to the wind. As you recall 
those tones, so full of brilliancy and pride, the 
quiet virtues fade, like the soft haze upon a spring 
landscape driven westward by a swift, sea-born 
storm. The pulse bounds ; the eyes flash ; the heart 
trembles with its sharp springs. Hope dilates. 



/ 

/ 



A BROKEN HOPE. i8i 

like the eye, fed with swift blood leaping to the 
brain. 

Again the image of Miss Dalton, so fine, so noble, 
so womanly, fills and bounds the Future. The lin- 
gering tokens of grief drop away from you, as the 
lingering loves of boyhood are consumed by your 
scalding passion, or drift into clouds of vapor. 

You hsten to the calm, thoughtful advice of the 
father, with a deep consciousness of something 
stronger than his counsels seething in your bosom. 
The words of caution, of instruction, of guidance, 
fall upon your heated imagination hke the night - 
dews upon the crater of an JEtna. They are benef- 
icent and healthful for the straggling herbage upon 
the surface of the mountain, but they do not reach 
or temper the inner fires that are rolling their billows 
below. 

You drop hints from time to time, to those with 
whom you are most familiar, of some prospective 
change of condition. There is a new and cheerful 
interest in the building-plans of your neighbors, — 
a new and cheerful study of the principles of domes- 
tic architecture, — in which very elegant boudoirs, 
adorned with harps, hold prominent place ; and 
libraries vrith gilt-bound books, very rich in lyrical 
and dramatic poetry ; fine views from bay-windows ; 
graceful pots of flowers ; sleek-looking ItaUan grey- 



i82 DREAM-LIFE, 

hounds ; cheerful sunHght ; musical goldfinches 
chattering on the wall ; superb pictures of prin- 
cesses in peasant dresses ; soft Axminster carpets ; 
easy-acting bell-pulls ; gigantic candelabra ; porce- 
lain vases of classic shape ; neat waiters in white 
aprons ; luxurious lounges ; and to crown them all 
with the very height of your pride, — the elegant 
Laura, the mistress, and the guardian of your soul, 
moving amid the scene hke some new Duchess of 
Valliere. 

You catch chance sights here and there of the 
blue-eyed Madge : you see her in her mother's house- 
hold, the earnest and devoted daughter, — gliding 
gracefully about her mother's cottage, the very type 
of gentleness and of duty. Yet withal there are 
sparks of spirit in her that pique your pride, lofty 
as it is. You offer flowers, which she accepts with 
a kind smile, not of coquetry, but of simplest thank- 
fulness. She is not the girl to gratify your vanity 
with any half-show of tenderness. And if there 
lived ever in her heart an old girlish liking for the 
schoolboy Clarence, it is all gone before the roman- 
tic lover of the elegant Laura ; or at most it lies in 
some obscure comer of her soul, never to be brought 
to light. 

You enter upon the new pursuits, which your 
father has advised, with a lofty consciousness, not 



A BROKEN HOPE. 183 

only of the strength of your mind, but of your heart. 
You. reHeve your opening professional study with 
long letters to Miss Dalton, full of Shakspearean 
compliments, and touched off with very dainty elab- 
oration. And you receive pleasant, gossipy notes 
in answer, — full of quotations, and a delightful 
vagueness. 

Youth is in a grand flush, hke the hot days of 
ending Summer ; and pleasant dreams enthrall your 
spmt, like the smoky atmosphere that bathes the 
landscape of an August day. Hope rides high in 
the heavens, as when the Summer sun mounts near- 
est to the zenith. Youth feels the fulness of matu- 
rity before the second season of life is ended ; yet is 
it a vain maturity, and all the glow is deceitful. 
Those fruits that ripen in Summer do not last. 
They are sweet ; they are glowing with gold ; but 
they melt with a luscious sweetness upon the lip. 
They do not give that strength and nutriment which 
will bear a man bravely through the coming chills of 
"Winter. 

The last scene of Summer changes now to the 
cobwebbed ceiHng of an attorney's office. Books of 
law, scattered ingloriously at your elbow, speak dully 
to the flush of your vanities. You are seated at your 
side-desk, where you have wrought at those hea^y, 



1 84 DREAM-LIFE. 

mechanic labors of drafting which go before a 
knowledge of your craft. 

A letter is by you, which you regard with strange 
feeUngs : it is yet unopened. It comes from Laui-a. 
It is in reply to one which has cost you very much 
of exquisite elaboration. You have made your avow- 
al of feehng as much like a poem as your education 
would admit. Indeed it was a pretty bit of writ- 
ing, — promising not so much the trustful love of 
an earnest and devoted heart, as the fervor of a pas- 
sion which consumed you, and glowed Hke a ftu'nace 
through the lines of your letter. It was a confes- 
sion in which your vanity of intellect had taken very 
entertaining part, and in which your judgment was 
too cool to appear at aU. 

She must needs break out into raptures at such 
a performance ; and her own will doubtless be tem- 
pered with even greater passion. 

It is weU to shift your chair somewhat, so that 
the clerks of the office may not see your emotion as 
you read. It would be silly to manifest your ex- 
uberance in a dismal, dark office of your instructing 
attorney. One sighs rather for woods, and brooks, 
and sunshine, in whose company the hopes of youth 
stretch into fulfilment. 

We will look only at a closing passage : — 



A BROKEN HOPE. 185 

" My friend Clarence will, I trust, believe me, 

when I say that his letter was a surprise. To say 
that it was very grateful, would be what my woman- 
ly vanity could not fail to claim. I only wish that I 
was equal to the flattering portrait which he has 
drawTi. I even half fancy that he is joking me, and 
can hardly believe that my matronly air should have 
quite won his youthful heart. At least I shall try 
not to believe it ; and when I welcome him one 
day, the husband of some fairy who is worthy of his 
love, we vdll smile together at the old lady who once 
played the Circe to his senses. Seriously, my friend 
Clarence, I know your impulse of heart has carried 
you away, and that in a year's time, you will smile 
with me at your old penchant for one so much your 
senior, and so ill-suited to your years, as your true 
friend, Laura." 

Magnificent Miss Dalton ! 

Read it again. Stick your knife in the desk : — 
tut ! — you will break the blade. Fold up the letter 
carefully, and toss it upon your pile of papers. 
Open Cliitty again ; — pleasant reading is Chitty ! 
Lean upon your hand — your two hands, so that no 
one will catch sight of your face. Chitty is very in- 
teresting, — how sparkling and imaginative ! — what 
a depth and flow of passion in Chitty ! 



1 86 DREAM-LIFE. 

The ojSice is a capital place — so quiet and sunny. 
Law is a delightful study — so captivating, and such 
stores of romance ! And then those trips to the 
Hall offer such relief and variety, — especially just 
now. It would be well not to betray your, eagerness 
to go. You can brush your hat a round or two, 
and take a peep into the broken bit of looking-glass 
over the wash-stand. 

You lengthen your walk, as you sometimes do, by 
a stroll upon the Battery, — though rarely upon 
such a blustering November day. You put your 
hands in your pockets, and look out upon the toss- 
ing sea. 

It is a fine sight — very fine. There are few finer 
bays in the world than New York Bay, — either to 
look at, or for that matter, to sleep in. The ships 
ride up thickly, dashing about the cold spray 
delightfully ; the little cutters gleam in the Novem- 
ber sunshine like white flowers shivering in the 
wind. 

The sky is rich — all mottled with cold, gray 
streaks of cloud. The old apple-women, with their 
noses frost-bitten, look cheerful and blue. The rag- 
ged immigrants, in short trousers and bell-crowned 
hats, stalk about with a very happy expression, and 
very short-stemmed pipes ; their yellow-haired ba- 
bies look comfortably red and glowing. And the 



A BROKEN HOPE, 187 

trees with their scant, pinched foKage have a charm- 
ing, summer-like effect. 

Amid it all the thoughts of the boudoir, and harp- 
sichord, and goldfinches, and Axminster carpets, 
and sunshine, and Laura, are so very, very pleasant ! 
How delighted you would be to see her married to 
the stout man in the red cravat, who gave her bou- 
quets, and strolled with her on the deck of the 
steamer upon the St. Lawrence ! What a jaunty, 
self-satisfied air he wore ; and with what consider- 
ate forbearance he treated you — calling you once 
or twice — Master Clarence. It never occurred to 
you before, how much you must be indebted to 
that pleasant, stout man. 

You try sadly to be cheerful ; you smile oddly ; 
your pride comes strongly to your help, but yet 
helps you very little. It is not so much a broken 
heart that you have to mourn over, as a broken 
dream. You seem to see in a hundred ways, that 
had never occurred to you before, the marks of her 
superior age. Above all it is manifest in the cool 
and unimpassioned tone of her letter. Yet how 
kindly withal. It would be a relief to be angry. 

New visions come to you, wakened by the broken 
fancy which has just now eluded your gi*asp. You 
will make yourself, if not old, at least gifted with 
the force and dignity of age. You will be a man, 



1 88 DREAM-LIFE, 

and build no more castles until you can people them 
■with men. In an excess of pride you even take um- 
brage at the sex ; they can have little appreciation 
of that engrossing tenderness of which you feel 
yourself to be capable. Love shall henceforth be 
dead, and you will live boldly without it. 

Just so, when some dark, eastern cloud-bank 

shrouds for a morning the sun of later August, we 
say in our shivering pride — the winter is come 
early. But God manages the seasons better than 
we ; and in a day, or an hour perhaps, the cloud 
will pass, and the heavens glow again upon our un- 
grateful heads. 

Well it is even so, that the passionate dreams of 
youth break up and wither. Vanity becomes tem- 
pered with wholesome pride ; and passion yields to 
the riper judgment of manhood, — even as the 
August heats pass on, and over, into the genial 
glow of a September sun. There is a strong growth 
in the struggles against mortified pride ; and then 
only does the youth get an ennobhng consciousness 
of that manhood which is dawning in him, when ho 
has fairly surmounted those puny vexations which a 
wounded vanity creates. 

Now your heart is driven home ; and that cher- 
ished place, where so little while ago you wore your 



A BROKEN HOPE. 189 

vanities with an air that mocked even your gTief, 
and that subdued your better nature, seems to 
stretch toward you over long miles of distance its 
wings of love, and to welcome back to the sister's 
and the father's heart, not the self-sufficient and 
vaunting youth, but the brother and son — the 
school-boy Clarence. Like a thirsty child, you stray 
in thought to that fountain of cheer, and live again 
— your vanity ci-ushed, your wild hope broken — in 
the warm and natural affections of the boyish home. 
Clouds weave the Sujoier into the season of Au- 
tumn ; and Youth rises fi'om dashed hopes into the 
stature of a Man. 



A UTUMN; 

OR, 

THE DREAMS OF MANHOOD, 



DREAMS OF MANHOOD. 



Autumn, 



rriHERE are those who shudder at the approach 
-■- of Autumn, and who feel a light grief stealing 
over their spirits, like an October haze, as the even- 
ing shadows slant sooner, and longer, over the face 
of an ending August day. 

But is not Autumn the Manhood of the year ? Is 
it not the ripest of the seasons? Do not proud 
flowers blossom, — the golden-rod, the pui'ple orchis, 
the dahlia, and the bloody cardinal of the swamp- 
lands? 

The fruits too are golden, hanging heavy from the 

tasked trees. The fields of maize show w^eeping 

spindles, and broad rustling leaves, and ears half 

glowing with the crowded corn ; the September 

13 



194 ■ DREAM-LIFE. 

wind whistles over their thick-set ranks with whis- 
pers of plenty. The staggering stalks of the buck- 
wheat grow red with ripeness, and tip their tops 
with clustering tricornered kernels. 

The cattle, loosed from the summer's yoke, grow 
strong upon the meadows new-starting from the 
scythe. The lambs of April, rounded into fulness of 
limb, and gaining day by day their woolly cloak, bite 
at the nodding clover-heads ; or, with their noses 
to the ground, they stand in solemn, circular con- 
clave under the pasture oaks, while the noon-sun 
beats with the lingering passion of July. 

The Bob-o'-Lincolns have come back from their 
Southern rambles among the rice, all speckled with 
gray ; and singing no longer as they did in spring, 
they quietly feed upon the ripened reeds that strag- 
gle along the borders of the walls. The larks, with 
.their black and yellow breastplates, and lifted heads, 
stand tall upon the close-mown meadow, and at 
your first motion of approach spring up, and soar 
away, and Hght again, and with their lifted heads 
renew the watch. The quails, in half-grown coveys, 
saunter hidden through the underbrush that skirts 
the wood, and only when you are close upon them, 
whir away, and drop scattered imder the coverts of 
the forest. 

The robins, long ago deserting the garden neigh- 



AUTUMN. 195 

borhood, feed at eventide in flocks upon the bloody 
berries of the sumac ; and the soft-eyed pigeons dis- 
pute possession of the feast. The squirrels chatter 
at sunrise, and gnaw off the full-grown burrs of the 
chestnuts. The lazy blackbirds skip after the loiter- 
ing cow, watchful of the crickets that her slow steps 
start to danger. The crows in companies caw aloft, 
and hang high over the carcass of some slaughtered 
sheep lying ragged upon the hills. 

The ash-trees grow crimson in color, and lose 
their summer life in great gouts of blood. The 
birches touch their frail spray with yellow; the 
chestnuts drop down their leaves in brown, twirling 
showers. The beeches, crimped with the frost, 
guard their foliage until each leaf whistles white in 
the November gales. The bitter-sweet hangs its 
bare and leafless tendrils from rock to tree, and 
sways with the weight of its brazen berries. The 
sturdy oaks, unyielding to the winds and to the 
frosts, struggle long against the approaches of the 
winter, and in their struggles wear faces of orange, 
of scarlet, of crimson, and of brown ; and finally, 
yielding to swift winds, as youth's pride yields to 
manly duty, strew the ground with the scattered 
glories of their summer strength, and warm and feed 
the earth with the debris of their leafy honors. 

The maple in the lowlands turns suddenly its sil- 



196 DREAM-LIFE. 

very greenness into orange scarlet, and in the com- 
ing cMlliness of the autumn eventide seems to catch 
the glories of the sunset, and to wear them — as a 
sign of God's old promise in Egypt — like a pillar 
of cloud by day, and of fire by night. 

And when all these are done, — and in the paved 
and noisy aisles of the city the ailanthus, with all its 
greenness gone, lifts up its skeleton fingers to the 
God of Autumn and of storms, — the dogwood still 
guards its crown ; and the branches, which stretched 
their white canvas in April, now bear up a spire of 
bloody tongues, that lie against the leafless woods 
like a tree on fire. 

Autumn brings to the home the cheerful glow of 
" first fires." It withdraws the thoughts from the 
wide and joyous landscape of Summer, and fixes 
them upon those objects which bloom and rejoice 
within the household. The old hearth, that has 
rioted the Summer through with boughs and blos- 
soms, gives up its withered tenantry. The fire- 
dogs gleam kindly upon the evening hours ; and the 
blaze wakens those sweet hopes and prayers which 
cluster around the fireside of home. 

The wantoning and the riot of the season gone are 
softened in memory, and supply joys to the season 
to come, — just as youth's audacity and pride give a 
glow to the recollections of our manhood. 



AUTUMN. 197 

At mid-day the air is mild and soft ; a warm, blue 
smoke lies in the mountain gaps ; the tracery of dis- 
tant woods upon the upland hangs in the haze with 
a dreamy gorgeousness of coloring. The river runs 
low with August drought, and frets upon the pebbly 
bottom with a soft, low murmur, as of joyousness 
gone by. The hemlocks of the river-bank rise in 
tapering sheens, and tell tales of Spring. 

As the sun sinks, doubling his disk in the October 
smoke, the low south-wind creeps over the withered 
tree-tops, and drips the leaves upon the land. The 
windows, that were wide open at noon, are closed ; 
and a bright blaze — to drive off the easterly damp- 
ness that promises a storm — flashes lightly and 
kindly over the book-shelves and busts ujoon my 
wall. 

As the sun sinks lower and lower, his red beams 
die in a sea of great gray clouds. Slowly and 
quietly they creep up over the night-sky. Venus is 
shrouded. The western stars blink faintly, then 
fade in the mounting vapors. The vane points east 
of south. The constellations in the zenith struggle 
to be seen, but presently give over, and hide their 
shining. 

By late lamp-light the sky is all gray and dark ; 
the vane has turned two points nearer east. The 
clouds spit fine rain-drops, that you only feel with 



198 DREAM-LIFE. 

your face turned to the heavens. . But soon they 
grow thicker and heavier ; and as I sit, watching the 
blaze, and — dreaming — they patter thick and fast 
under the driving vdnd upon the window, hke the 
swift tread of an army of Men. 



Pride of Manliness, 

AND has manhood no dreams ? Does the soul 
wither at that Kubicon which Hes between 
the GaUic coimtrj^ of youth and the Eome of manh- 
ness ? Does not fancy still love to cheat the heart, and 
weave gorgeous tissues to hang upon that horizon 
which lies along the years that are to come ? Is 
happiness so exhausted that no new forms of it lie 
in the mines of imagination, for busy hopes to drag 
up to day ? 

"Where then would live the motives to an upward 
looking of the eye and of the soul ; where the beck- 
onings that bid us ever onward ? 

But these later dreams are not the dreams of fond 
boyhood, whose eye sees rarely below the surface of 
things ; nor yet the delicious hopes of sparkling- 
blooded youth : they are dreams of sober trustful- 



200 DREAM-LIFE. 

ness, of practical results, of hard-wrought world- 
success, and maybe, of Love and of Joy. 

Ambitious forays do not rest where they rested 
once : hitherto the balance of youth has given 
you, in all that you have dreamed of accomplish- 
ment, a strong vantage against age ; hitherto in all 
your estimates you have been able to multiply 
them by that access of thought and of strength 
which manhood would bring to you. Now this is 
forever ended. 

There is a great meaning in that word — manhood. 
It covers all human growth. It supposes no exten- 
sions or increase ; it is integral, fixed, perfect, — the 
whole. There is no getting beyond manhood ; it is 
much to hve up to it ; but once reached, you are all 
that a man was made to be in this world. 

It is a disturbing thought — that a man is per- 
fected, so far as strength goes ; that he will never be 
abler to do liis work than under the very sun which 
is now shining on him. There is a seriousness that 
few call to mind in the reflection that whatever you 
do in this age of manhood is an unalterable type of 
your whole bigness. You may qualify particulars of 
your character by refinements, by special studies, 
and practice ; but, once a man, and there is no more 
manliness to be lived for. 

This thought kmdles your soul to new and swifter 



PRIDE OF MANLINESS. 201 

dreams of ambition than belonged to youth. They 
were toys ; these are weapons. They were fancies ; 
these are motives. The soul begins to struggle with 
the dust, the sloth, the circumstance, that beleaguer 
humanity, and to stagger into the van of action. 

Perception, whose limits lay along a narrow hori- 
zon, now tops that horizon, and spreads, and reaches 
toward the heaven of the Infinite. The mind feels 
its birth, and struggles toward the great birth-mas- 
ter. The heart glows ; its humanities even yield and 
crimple under the fierce heat of mental pride. Vows 
leap upward, and pile rampart upon rampart to scale 
all the degrees of human power. 

Are there not times in every man's life when there 
flashes on him a feeling — nay, more, an absolute con- 
viction — that this soul is but a spark belonging to 
some upper fire ; and that, by as much as we draw 
near by effort, by resolve, by intensity of endeavor, 
to that upper fire, by so much we draw nearer to our 
home, and mate ourselves with angels ? Is there not 
a ringing desire in many minds to seize hold of what 
floats above us in the universe of thought, and drag 
down what shreds we can to scatter to the world? 
Is it not belonging to greatness to catch lightning 
from the plains where lightning lives, and cui'b it 
for the handling of men ? 

Eesolve is what makes a man manliest ; — not puny 



202 DREAM-LIFE. 

resolve, not crude determination, not errant purpose, 
but that strong and indefatigable will which treads 
down difficulties and danger as a boy treads down 
the heaving frost-lands of winter, — which kindles his 
eye and brain with a proud pulse-beat toward the 
unattainable. Will makes men giants. It made 
Napoleon an emperor of kings. Bacon a fathomer of 
nature, Byron a tutor of passion, and the martjTS 
masters of Death. 

In this age of manhood you look back upon the 
dreams of the years that are past : they glide to the 
vision in pompous procession ; they seem bloated 
with infancy. They are without sinew or bone. 
They do not bear the hard touches of the man's hand. 

It is not long, to be sure, since the Summer of hfe 
ended with that broken hope ; but the few years 
that He between have given long steps upward. The 
little grief that threw its shadow, and the broken 
vision that deluded you, have made the passing years 
long in such feeling as ripens manhood. Nothing 
lays the brown of autumn upon the green of summer 
so quick as storms. 

There have been changes too in the home scenes ; 
these graft age upon a man. Nelly — your sweet 
Nelly of childhood, your affectionate sister of youth 
— has gi'own out of the old brotherly companionship 
into the new dignity of a household. 



PRIDE OF MANLINESS, 203 

The fire flames and flashes upon the accustomed 
hearth. The father's chair is there in the wonted 
corner ; he himseK — we must call him the old man 
now, though his head shows few white honors — 
wears a calmness and a trust that li^ht the failinir 
eye. Nelly is not away ; Nelly is a wife ; and the 
husband yonder, as you may have dreamed, — your 
old friend Frank. 

Her eye is joyous ; her kindness to you is un- 
abated ; her care for you is quicker and wiser. But 
yet the old unity of the household seems broken ; 
nor can all her winning attentions bring back the 
feeling which lived in Spring under the garret-roof. 

The isolation, the unity, the integrity of manhood 
make a strong prop for the mind, but a weak one 
for the heart. Dignity can but poorly fill up that 
chasm of the soul which the home affections once 
occupied. Life's duties and honors press hard upon 
the bosom that once throbbed at a mother's tones, 
and that bounded under a mother's smiles. 

In such home, the strength you boast of seems a 
weakness ; manhood leans into childish memories, 
and melts — as Autumn frosts yield to a soft south- 
wind coming from a Tropic spring. You feel in a 
desert, where you once felt at home, — in a bounded 
landscape, that was once the world. 

The tall sycamores have dwindled to paltry trees ; 



204 DREAM-LIFE. 

the hills that were so large, and lay at such grand 
distance to the eye of childhood, are now near by, 
and have fallen away to mere rolling waves of up- 
land. The garden-fence, that was so gigantic, is 
now only a simple jDaling ; its gate that was such 
a cumbrous affair — reminding you of Gaza — you 
might easily lift from its hinges. The lofty dove- 
cote, which seemed to rise Hke a monument of art 
before your boyish vision, is now only a flimsy box 
upon a tall spar of hemlock. 

The garret even, with its lofty beams, its dark 
stains, and its obscure corners, where the white hats 
and coats hung ghost-like, is but a low loft darkened 
by age, — hung over with cobwebs, dimly lighted with 
foul windows, — its romping Charlie — its glee — its 
swing — its joy — its mystery — all gone forever. 

The old gallipots and retorts are not anywhere to 
be seen in the second-story window of the brick 
school-house. Dr. Bidlow is no more. The trees 
that seemed so large, the gymnastic feats that were 
so extraordinary, the boy that made a snapper of his 
handkerchief, — have all lost their greatness and their 
dread. Even the springy English master, who 
dressed his hair with the ferule, has become the 
middle-aged father of five curly-headed boys, and has 
entered upon what once seemed the gigantic com- 
merce of "stationery and account-books." 



PRIDE OF MANLINESS. 205 

The marvellous labyrinth of closets at the old 
mansion where you once paid a visit — in a coach — 
is all dissipated. They have turned out to be the 
merest cupboards in the wall. Nat, who had trav- 
elled and seen London, is by no means so sui-prising 
a fellow to your manhood as he was to the boy. He 
has grown spare, and wears spectacles. He is not 
so famous as he was. You would hardly think of 
consulting him now about your marriage, or even 
about the price of goats upon London Bridge. 

As for Jenn}^ — your first, fond flame — lively, ro- 
mantic, black-eyed Jenny, — the reader of "Thad- 
deus of Warsaw," — who sighed and wore blue rib- 
bons on her bonnet, — who wrote love-notes, — 
who talked so tenderly of broken hearts, — who 
used a glass seal with a Cupid and a dart, — dear 
Jenny ! — she is now the plump and thriving wife of 
the apothecary of the town. She sweeps out every 
morning at seven the little entry of the apothecary's 
house; she buys a "joint" twice a week from the 
butcher, and is particular to have the ''knuckle" 
thrown in for soups ; she wears a sky-blue calico 
gown, and dresses her hair in three little flat quirls 
on either side of her head, each one pierced through 
with a two-pronged hair-pin. 

She does not read "Thaddeus of Warsaw" now. 



n. 

Man of the World, 

TjlEW persons live through the first periods of 
-■- manhood without strong temptations to be 
counted "men of the world." The idea looms 
grandly among those vanities that hedge a man's 
approach to maturity. 

Clarence is in good training for the acceptance 
of this idea. The broken hope, which clouded his 
closing youth, shoots over its influence upon the 
dawn of manhood. Mortified pride had taught — 
as it always teaches — not caution only, but doubt, 
distrust, indifference. A new pride grows up on 
the ruins of the old, weak, and vain pride of youth. 
Then it was a pride of learning, or of affection ; now 
it is a pride of indifference. Then the world proved 
bleak and cold, as contrasted with his shining 
dreams ; and now he accepts the proof, and wins 
from it what he can. 



MAN OF THE WORLD. 207 

The man of the world puts on the method and 
measure of the world : he studies its humors. He 
gives up the boyish notion of a sincerity among men 
hke that of youth : he hves to seem. He conquers 
such annoyances as the world may thrust upon him, 
in the shape of gi'ief or losses, like a practical athlete 
of the ring. He studies moral sparring. 

With somewhat of this strange vanity growing 
on you, you do not suffer the heart to wake into 
life except in such fanciful dreams as tempt you 
back to the sunny slopes of childhood. 

In this mood you fall in with Dalton, who has 
just returned from a year passed in the French capi- 
tal. There is an easy suavity and graceful indif- 
ference in his manner that chimes admirably with 
your humor. He is gracious, without needing to 
be kind. He is a friend, without any challenge or 
proffer of sincerity. He is just one of those adepts 
in world tactics which match him with all men, 
but which link him to none. He has made it his 
art to be desired and admired, but rarely to be 
trusted. You could not have a better teacher. 

Under such instruction you become disgusted for 
the time with any effort, or pulse of affection, which 
does not have immediate and practical bearing upon 
that success in life by which you measure your hopes. 
The dreams of love, of romantic adventure, of placid 



2o8 DREAM-LIFE. 

joy, have all gone out with the fantastic images to 
which your passionate youth had joined them. The 
world is now regarded as a tournament, where the 
gladiatorship of life is to be exhibited at your best 
endeavor. Its honors and joys lie in a brilliant 
pennon and a plaudit. 

Dalton is learned in those arts which make of ac- 
tion, not a duty, but a conquest ; and sense of duty 
has expired in you with those romantic hopes to 
which you bound it, not as much through sympathy 
as ignorance. It is a cold and a bitterly selfish work 
that lies before you, — to be covered over "v^ith such 
boiTowed show of smiles as men call affability. 
The heart wears a stout, brazen screen ; its incli- 
nations grow .'to the habit of your ambitious pro- 
jects. 

In such mood come swift dreams of wealth, — not 
of mere accumulation, but of the splendor and 
parade which in our Western world are its chiefest 
attractions. You grow observant of markets, and 
estimate percentages. You fondle some speculation 
in your thought, until it grows into a gigantic 
scheme of profit ; and if the venture prove success- 
ful, you follow the tide tremulously, until some 
sudden reverse throws you back upon the resources 
of your professional employ. 

But again as you see this and that one wearing 



MAN OF THE WORLD, 209 

the blazonry which wealth wins, and which the man 
of the world is sure to covet, — your weak soul 
glows again with the impassioned desire, and you 
hunger, with brute appetite and bestial eye, for 
riches. You see the mania around you, and it is 
relieved of odium by the community of error. You 
consult some gray old veteran in the war of gold, 
scarred with wounds, and crowned with honors, and 
watch eagerly for the words and the ways which 
have won him wealth. 

Your fingers tingle with mad expectancies ; your 
eyes roam, lost in estimates. Your note-book shows 
long lines of figures. Your reading of the news 
centres in the stock-hst. Your brow grows cramped 
with the fever of anxiety. Through whole church- 
hours your dreams range over the shadowy transac- 
tions of the week or the month to come. 

Even vdth old religious habit clinging fast to your 
soul, you dream now only of nice conformity, com- 
fortable faith, high respectability; there Hes veiy 
little in you of that noble consciousness of Duty 
performed, — of living up to the Life that is in you, 
— of grasping boldly and stoutly at those chains of 
Love which the Infinite Power has lowered to our 
reach. You do not dream of being, but of seeming. 
You spill the real essence, and clutch at the vial 
which has only a label of Truth. Great and holy 
14 



2IO DREAM-LIFE. 

thoughts of the Future, — shadowy, yet bold con- 
ceptions of the Infinite, — float past you dimly, and 
your hold is never strong enough to grapple them to 
you. They fly, like eagles, too near the sun ; and 
there lies game below for your vulture beak to feed 
upon. 

Great thoughts belong only and truly to him 
whose mind can hold them. No matter who first 
puts them in words, if they come to a soul and fill 
it, they belong to it, — whether they floated on the 
voice of others, or on the wings of silence and the 
night. 

To be up with the fashion of the time, to be 
ignorant of plain things and people, and to be know- 
ing in brilliancies, is a kind of Pelhamism that is 
very apt to overtake one in the first blush of man- 
hood. To hold a fair place in the after-dinner 
table-talk, to meet distinction as a familiarity, to 
wear salon honors with aplomb, to know affection so 
far as to wield it into grace of language, are all 
splendid achievements with a man of the world. 
Instruction is caught without asking it; and no 
ignorance so shames as ignorance of those forms by 
which natural impulse is subdued to the tone of 
civilian habit. You conceal what teUs of the man, 
and cover it with what smacks of the roue. 

Perhaps under such training, and with a slight 



MAN OF THE WORLD. 211 

memory of early mortification to point your spirit, 
you affect those gallantries of heart and action 
which the world calls flirtation. You may study 
brilliancies of speech to wrap their net around those 
susceptible hearts whose habit is too naive by nature 
to wear the leaden covering of custom. You win 
approaches by artful counterfeit of earnestness, and 
dash away any naivete of confidence with some brave 
sophism of the world. A doubt or a distrust piques 
your pride, and makes attentions wear a humility 
that wins anew. An indifference piques you more, 
and throws into your art a counter-indifference, — 
lit up by bold flashes of feeling, — sparkling with 
careless brilliancies, and crowned with a triumph of 
neglect. 

It is curious how ingeniously a man's vanity will 
frame apologies for such action. It is pleasant to 
give pleasure ; you Hke to see a joyous sparkle of 
the eye, whether lit up by your presence or by some 
buoyant fancy. It is a beguiling task to weave 
words into some soft, melodious flow, that shall keep 
the ear and kindle the eye ; and to strew it over 
with haK-hidden praises, so deftly couched in 
double terms that their aroma shall only come to 
the heart hours afterward, and seem to be the 
merest accidents of truth. It is a happy art to 
make such subdued show of emotion as seems to 



212 DREAM-LIFE. 

struggle with pride, and to flush the eye with a 
moisture, of which you seem ashamed, and yet are 
proud. It is a pretty practice to throw an earnest- 
ness into look and gesture, that shall seem full of 
pleading, and yet — ask nothing. 

And yet it is hard to admire greatly the reputa- 
tion of that man who builds his triumphs upon 
womanly weakness ; that distinction is not over-en- 
during whose chiefest merit springs out of the de- 
lusions of a too trustful heart. The man, who wins 
it, wins only a poor sort of womanly distinction. 
Without power to cope with men, he triumphs over 
the weakness of the other sex only by h;}^ocrisy. 
He wears none of the armor of Komans, and he 
parleys with Punic faith. 

Yet even now there is a lurking goodness in 

you that traces its beginning to the old garret- 
home, — there is an air in the harvest heats that 
whispers of the bloom of Spring. 

And over your brilliant career as man of the 
world, however lit up b}^ a morbid vanity, or galvan- 
ized by a lascivious passion, there will come at times 
the consciousness of a better heart, strugghng be- 
neath your cankered action, — like the low Vesuvian 
fire, reeking vainly under rough beds of tufa and 
scoriated lava. As you smile in loge or mlon^ with 
daring smiles, or press with villain fondness the 



MAN OF THE WORLD. 213 

hand of those lady-votaries of the same god you 
serve, there will gleam upon you over the waste of 
rolling years a memory that quickens again the 
nobler and bolder instincts of the heart. 

Childish recollections, with their purity and ear- 
nestness, — a sister's love, — a mother's solicitude, 
will flood your soul once more with a gushing 
sensibility that yearns for enjoyment. And the con- 
sciousness of some lingering nobility of affection, 
that can only grow great in mating itself with 
nobility of heart, will sweep off your puny triumphs, 
your Platonic friendships, your dashing coquetries, 
like the foul smoke of a city before a fresh breeze of 
the country autumn. 



m. 

Manly Hope, 

YOU are at home again ; not your own home, — 
that is gone, — but at the home of Nelly and 
of Frank. The city heats of summer drive you to 
the country. You ramble, with a little kindhng of 
old desires and memories, over the hill-sides that 
once bounded your boyish vision. Here you netted 
the wild rabbits, as they came out at dusk to feed ; 
there, upon that tall chestnut, you cruelly maimed 
your first captive squirrel. Tlie old maples are even 
now scarred with the rude cuts you gave them in 
sappy March. 

You sit down upon some height overlooking the 
valley where you were born ; you trace the faint, 
silvery line of river ; you detect by the leaning elm 
your old bathing-place upon the Saturdays of Sum- 
mer. Your eye dwells upon some patches of pasture- 
wood which were famous for their nuts. Your ram- 



MANLY HOPE. 215 

bling and saddened vision roams over the houses ; it 
traces the familiar chimney-stacks ; it searches out 
the low-lying cottages ; it dwells upon the gray roof 
sleeping yonder under the sycamores. 

Tears swell in your eye as you gaze ; you cannot 
tell whence or why they come. Yet they are tears 
eloquent of feeling. They speak of brother-children, 
— of boyish glee, — of the flush of young health, — 
of a mother's devotion, — of the home affections, — 
of the vanities of life, — of the wasting years, — of 
the Death that must shroud what friends remain, as 
it has shrouded what friends have gone, — and pos- 
sibly of some Great Hope, beaming on your seared 
manhood dimly from the upper world. 

Your wealth suffices for all the luxuries of life ; 
there is no fear of coming w^ant ; health beats strong 
in your veins ; you have learned to hold a place 
in the world with a man's strength, and a man's 
confidence. And yet in the view of those sweet 
scenes which belonged to early days, when neither 
strength, confidence, nor wealth were yours, — days 
never to come again, — a shade of melancholy 
broods upon your spirit, and covers with its veil all 
that fierce pride which your worldly wisdom has 

WTOUght. 

You visit again with Frank the country home- 
stead of his grandfather : he is dead ; but the old 



2i6 DREAM-LIFE. 

lady still lives ; and blind Fanny, now drawing to- 
ward womanhood, wears yet thi-ough lier darkened 
life the same air of placid content, and of sweet 
trustfulness in Heaven. The boys, whom you as- 
tounded with yom- stories of books, are building 
up now with steady industiy the queen cities of our 
new western land. The old clergyman is gone from 
the desk, and from under his sounding board ; he 
sleeps beneath a brown stone slab in the church- 
yard. The stout deacon is dead ; his wig and his 
wickedness rest together. The tall chorister sings 
yet ; but they have now a bass-viol — handled by a 
new schoolmaster — in place of his tuning-fork ; and 
the years have sown feeble quavers in his voice. 

Once more you meet at the home of Nelly the 
blue-eyed Madge. The sixpence is all forgotten ; 
you cannot certainly tell where your half of it may 
now be. Yet she is beautiful, just budding into 
the full ripeness of womanhood. Her eyes have a 
quiet, still joy, and hope beaming in them, hke an- 
gel's looks. Her motions have a native grace and 
freedom that no culture can bestow. Her words 
have a gentle earnestness and honesty that could 
never nurture guile. 

You had thought after your gay experiences of 
the world to meet her with a kind condescension, as 
an old friend of Nelly's. But there is that in her 



MANLY HOPE. 217 

eye which forbids all thought of condescension. 
There is that in her air which tells of a high wom- 
anly dignity, which can only be met on equal 
ground. Your pride is piqued. She has known — 
she must know j^our history ; but it does not tame 
her. There is no marked and submissive apprecia- 
tion of your gifts as a man of the world. 

She meets youi' happiest compliments with a veiy 
easy indifference ; she receives your elegant civilities 
with a very assured brow. She neither courts your 
societ}^ nor avoids it. She does not seek to pro- 
voke any special attention. And only when your 
old self glows in some casual kindness to Nelly, 
does her look beam with a flush of sympathy. 

This look touches you. It makes you ponder on 
the noble heart that lives in Madge. It makes you 
wish it were yours But that is gone. The fervor 
and the honesty of a glowing youth is swallowed 
up in the flash and splendor of the world. A half- 
regret chases over you at nightfall, when sohtude 
pierces you with the swift dart of gone-by memo- 
ries. But at morning the regret dies in the glitter 
of ambitious purposes. 

The Summer months linger ; and still you linger 
with them. Madge is often with Nelly ; and Madge 
is never less than Madge. You venture to point 
your attentions with a little more fervor ; but she 



2i8 DREAM-LIFE, 

meets the fervor with no glow. She knows too well 
the habit of your life. 

Strange feelings come over you, — feeHngs like 
half -for gotten memories, — mystical, dreamy, doubt- 
ful. You have seen a hundred faces more brilliant 
than that of Madge ; you have pressed a hundred 
jewelled hands that have returned a half-pressure 
to yours. You do not exactly admire ; to love you 
have forgotten ; j^ou only — linger. 

It is a soft autumn evening, and the harvest-moon 
is red and round over the eastern skirt of woods. 
You are attending Madge to that little cottage-home 
where lives that gentle and doting mother, who in 
the midst of her country retirement, cherishes that 
refined delicacy which never comes to a child but 
by inheritance, 

Madge has been passing the day wdth Nelly. 
Something — it may be the soft autumn air, waft- 
ing toward you the freshness of young days — 
moves you to speak as you have not ventured to 
speak, as your vanity has not allowed yon to speak 
before. 

" You remember, Madge, (you have guarded this 
sole token of boyish intimacy,) our split six- 
pence ? " 

" Perfectly ; " it is a short word to sjDeak, and 
there is no tremor in her tone, — not the slightest. 



MANLY HOPE, 219 

"You have it yet?" 

" I dare say I have it somewhere ; " — no tremor 
now ; she is very composed. 

" That was a happy time ; " — \evj great empha- 
sis on the word happy. 

" Very happy ; " — no emphasis anywhere. 

"I sometimes wish I might Hve it over again." 

" Yes ? " — inquiringly. 

" There are, after all, no pleasures in the world 
like those." 

" No ? " — inquiringly again. 

You thought you had learned to have language 
at command ; you never thought, after so many 
years' schooling of the world, that your pliant 
tongue would play you truant. Yet now you are 
silent. 

The moon steals its silvery way into the Hght 
flakes of cloud, and the air is soft as May. The 
cottage is in sight. Again you risk utterance : — 

"You must live very happily here." 

"I have very kind friends ; " — the very is empha- 
sized. 

" I am sure Nelly loves you very much." 

" Oh, I believe it ! " — with great earnestness. 

You are at the cottage-door. 

" Good night, Maggie ; " — very feelingly. 

" Good night, Clarence ; " — very kindly ; and she 



220 DREAM-LIFE. 

draws her hand coyly, and half tremulously, from 
your somewhat fevered grasp. 

You stroll away dreamily, watching the moon, — 
running over your fragmentary life, — haK moody, 
half pleased, haK hopeful. 

You come back stealthily, and with a heart throb- 
bing with a certain wild sense of shame, to watch the 
light gleaming in the cottage. You linger in the 
shadows of the trees until you catch a glimpse of her 
figure gliding past the window. You bear the image 
home with you. You are silent on your return. 
You retire early, but you do not sleep early. 

If you were only as you were : if it were not 

too late. If Madge could only love you, as you know 
she wiU and must love one manly heart, there would 
be a world of joy opening before you. But it is too 
late. 

You draw out Nelly to speak of Madge : NeUy is 
very prudent. "Madge is a dear girl," she says. 
Does Nelly even distrust you ? It is a sad thing to 
be too much a man of the world. 

You go back again to noisy, ambitious life : you 
try to drown old memories in its blaze and its 
vanities. Your lot seems cast beyond all change, 
and 3^ou task yourself with its noisy fulfilment. 
But amid the silence and the toil of your office- 
hours, a strange desire broods over your spirit, — a 



MANLY HOPE, 221 

desire for more of manliness, — that manliness 
which feels itself a protector of loving and trustful 
innocence. 

You look around upon the faces in which you have 
smiled unmeaning smiles : there is nothing there to 
feed your dawning desires. You meet with those 
ready to court you by flattering your vanity, by re- 
tailing the praises of what you may do well, by odi- 
ous familiarity, by brazen proffer of friendship, but 
you see in it all only the emptiness and the vanity 
which you have studied to enjoy. 

Sickness comes over you, and binds j^ou for weary 
days and nights, — in which hfe hovers doubtfuUy, 
and the lips babble secrets that you cherish. It is 
astonishing how disease clips a man from the arti- 
ficialities of the world. Lying lonely upon his bed, 
moaning, writhing, suffering, his soul joins on to the 
universe of souls b}'' only natural bonds. The facti- 
tious ties of wealth, of place, of reputation, vanish 
from the bleared eyes ; and the earnest heart, deep 
under all, craves only heartiness. 

The old longing of the office silence comes back, 
— not with the proud wish only of being a protector, 
but — of being protected. And whatever may be 
the trust in that beneficient Power who " chasteneth 
whom he loveth," there is yet an earnest, human 
yearning toward some one, whose love — most, and 



222 DREAM-LIFE. 

whose duty — least, would call her to your side ; 
whose soft hands would cool the fever of yours, 
whose step would wake a throb of joy, whose voice 
would tie you to hfe, and whose presence would 
make the worst of Death — an Adieu ! 

As you gain strength once more, you go back to 
Nelly's home. Her kindness does not falter ; every 
care and attention belong to you there. Again your 
eye rests upon that figure of Madge, and upon her 
face, wearing an even gentler expression as she sees 
you sitting pale and feeble by the old hearth-stone. 
She brings flowers — for Nelly: you beg Nelly to 
place them upon the httle table at your side. It is 
as yet the only taste of the country that you can 
enjoy. You love those flowers. 

After a time you grow strong, and walk in the 
fields. You linger until nightfall. You pass by the 
cottage where Madge hves. It is your pleasantest 
walk. The trees are greenest in that direction ; the 
shadows are softest ; the flowers are thickest. 

It is strange — this feeling in you. It is not the 
feeling you had for Laura Dalton. It does not even 
remind of that. That was an impulse, but this is 
growth. That was strong, but this is strength. You 
catch sight of her little notes to Nelly ; you read 
them over and over ; you treasure them ; you learn 



MANLY HOPE. 223 

them by heart. There is something in the very 
writing that touches you. 

You bid her adieu with tones of kindness that 
tremble, — and that meet a half-trembling tone in 
reply. She is very good. 

K it were not too late ! 



IV. 

Manly Love. 

A ND shall pride yield at length ? 

-^-^ Pride ! — and what has love to do with 

pride ? Let us see how it is. 

Madge is not rich ; she is not schooled in the 
arts of the world. You have wealth ; you are met 
respectfully by the veterans of fashion ; you have 
gained perhaps a kind of brilliancy of position. 

Would it then be a condescension to love Madge ? 
Dare you ask yourself such a question? Do you 
not know — in spite of your wordliness — that the 
man or the woman, who condescends to love, never 
loves in earnest ? 

But again Madge is possessed of a purity, a deli- 
cacy, and a dignity that lift her far above you, — that 
make you feel your weakness and your unwortlii- 
ness ; and it is the deep and the mortifying sense of 



MANLY LOVE. 225 

this unworthiness that makes you bolster yourself 
upon your pride. You know that you do yourseK 
honor in loving such grace and goodness ; you know 
that you would be honored tenfold more than you de- 
serve in being loved by so much grace and goodness. 

It scarce seems to you possible ; it is a joy too 
great to be hoped for ; and in the doubt of its at- 
tainment your old, worldly vanity comes in, and tells 
you to — beware ; and to hve on in the sj)lendor of 
your dissipation and in the lusts of your selfish 
habit. Yet still underneath all there is a deep, 
low voice, — quickened from above, — which assui-es 
you that you are capable of better things ; that you 
are not wholly recreant ; that a mine of unstarted 
tenderness still lies smouldering in your soul. 

And with this sense quickening your better nature, 
you venture the wealth of your whole emotional 
natui-e upon the hope that now blazes on your path. 

You are seated at your desk, working with 

such zeal of labor as your ambitious projects never 
could command. It is a letter to Margaret Boyne 
that so tasks your love, and makes the veins upon 
your forehead swell with the earnestness of the 
employ. 

" Dear Madge, — May I not call you thus, if 



only in memory of our childish affections ; and 
15 



226 DREAM-LIFE, 

might I dare to hope that a riper affection, which 
your character has awakened, may permit me to call 
you thus — always ? 

" If I have not ventured to speak, dear Madge, will 
you not believe that the consciousness of my own 
ill-desert has tied my tongue ; will you not at least 
give me credit for a little remaining modesty of 
heart? You know my hfe, and you know my char- 
acter, — what a sad jumble of errors and of misfor- 
tunes have belonged to each. You know the careless 
and the vain purposes which have made me recreant 
to the better nature which belonged to that sunny 
childhood, when we lived and grew up together. 
And will you not believe me when I say, that your 
grace of character and kindness of heart have drawn 
me back from the follies in which I lived, and quick- 
ened new desires which I thought to be wholly 
dead ? Can I indeed hope that you will overlook all 
that has gained your secret reproaches, and confide 
in a heart which is made conscious of better things 
by the love you have inspired ? 

" Ah, Madge, it is not with a vain show of words, 
or with any counterfeit of f eehng, that I write now ; 
you know it is not ; you know that my heart is lean- 
ing toward you with the freshness of its noblest 
instincts ; you know that — I love you ! 

" Can I, dare I hope, that it is not spoken in vain ? 



MANLY LOVE. 227 

I had thought in my pride never to make such 
avowal, — never again to sue for affection ; but your 
gentleness, your modesty, your virtues of Hfe and 
heart, have conquered me. I am sure you will treat 
me with the generosity of a victor. 

" You know my weaknesses ; I would not conceal 
fi'om you a single one, — even to win you. I can 
offer nothing to you wliich v^rill bear compaiison in 
value mth what is yours to bestow. I can only offer 
this strong hand of mine — to guard you ; and this 
fond heart — to love you ! 

"Am I rash? Am I extravagant, in word, or in 
hope ? Forgive it then, dear Madge, for the sake of 
our old childish affection ; and believe me, when I 
say, that what is here written — is written honestly. 
Adieu." 

It is with no fervor of boyish passion that you fold 
this letter : it is with the trembling hand of eager 
and earnest manhood. They tell you that man is 
not capable of love : so the September sun is not 
capable of warmth ! It may not indeed be so fierce 
as that of July ; but it is steadier. It does not force 
great flaunting leaves into breadth and succulence, 
but it matures whole harvests of plenty. 

There is a deep and earnest soul pervading the 
reply of Madge that makes it sacred ; it is full of 



228 DREAM-LIFE. 

delicacy, and full of hope. Yet it is not final. Her 
heart lies intrenched within the ramparts of Duty 
and of Devotion. It is a citadel of strength in the 
middle of the city of her affections. To win the 
way to it, there must be not only earnestness of love, 
but earnestness of life. 

Weeks roll by, and other letters pass and are an- 
swered, — a glow of warmth beaming on either side. 

You are again at the home of Nelly ; she is veiy 
joyous ; she is the confidante of Madge. Nelly feels, 
that with all your eiTors you have enough inner 
goodness to make Madge happy ; and she feels — 
doubly — that Madge has such excess of goodness as 
will cover your heart with joy. Yet she tells you 
very httle. She will give you no full assurance of 
the love of Madge ; she leaves that for yourself to 
win. 

She will even tease you in her pleasant way, until 
hope almost changes to despair, and your brow 
grows pale with the dread — that even now your 
unworthiness may condemn you. 

It is Summer weather ; and you have been walk- 
ing over the hills of home with Madge and Nelly. 
Nelly has found some excuse to leave you, — glancing 
at you most teasingly as she hurries away. 

You are left sitting with Madge upon a bank 
tufted with blue violets. You have been talking of 



MANLY LOVE. 229 

the days of childhood, and some word has called up 
the old chain of bo^'ish feeUng, and joined it to your 
new hope. 

"What you would say crowds too fast for utterance ; 
and you abandon it. But you take fi-om your 
pocket that little, broken bit of sixpence, — which 
you have found after long search, — and without a 
word, but with a look that tells youi- inmost thought, 
you lay it in the half-opened hand of Madge. 

She looks at you with a slight suffusion of color, — 
seems to hesitate a moment, — raises her other hand, 
and draws from her bosom by a bit of blue ribbon 
a little locket. She touches a spring, and there falls 
beside your rehque — another, that had once be- 
longed to it. 

Hope glows now Hke the sun. 

" And you have worn this, Maggie ? '* 

"Always!" 

"Deal- Madge!" 

*' Dear Clarence ! " 

And you pass your arm now, unchecked, 



around that yielding, graceful figure, and fold her 
to your bosom with the swift and blessed assurance 
that your fullest and noblest dream of love is won. 



Cheer amd Children, 

TTTHAT a glow there is to the sun ! What 
^ ^ warmth — yet it does not oppress you : what 
coolness — yet it is not too cool. The birds sing 
sweetly ; you catch yourself watching to see what 
new songsters they can be : they are only the old 
robins and thrushes ; yet what a new melody is in 
their throats ! 

The clouds hang gorgeous shapes upon the sky, — 
shapes they could hardly ever have fashioned before. 
The grass was never so gi-een, the buttercups were 
never so plentiful ; there was never such a life in 
the leaves. It seems as if the joyousness in you gave 
a throb to nature that made every green thing 
buoyant. 

Faces, too, are changed : men look pleasantly ; 
children are all charming children ; even babies look 



CHEER AND CHILDREN. 231 

tender and lovable. The street-beggar at your door 
is suddenly grown into a Belisarius, and is one of 
the most deserving heroes of modem times. Your 
mind is in a continued ferment ; you glide through 
your toil — dashing out sparkles of passion — like a 
ship in the sea. No difficulty daunts you : there is 
a kind of buoyancy in your soul that floats you 
over danger or doubt, as sea-waves heave calmly 
and smoothly over sunken rocks. 

You grow unusually amiable and kind ; you are 
earnest in your search of friends ; you shake hands 
"with your office-boy as if he were your second cou- 
ein. You joke cheerfully with the stout washer- 
woman, and give her a shilling over-change, and 
insist upon her keex)ing it, and grow quite merry at 
the recollection of it. You tap your hackman on 
the shoulder very familiarly, and tell him he is a 
capital fellow ; and don't allow him to whip his 
horses, except when driving to the post-office. You 
even ask him to take a glass of beer with you upon 
some chniy evening. You drink to the health of 
his wife. He says he has no wife ; whereupon you 
think him a very miserable man, and give him a 
dollar by way of consolation. 

You think all the editorials in the morning papers 
are remarkably well written, — whether upon your 
side, or upon the other. You think the stock-mar- 



232 DREAM-LIFE, 

ket has a very cheerful look, even with Erie — of 
which you are a large holder — down to seventy-five. 
You wonder why you never admired IVIrs. Hemans 
before, or Stoddard, or any of the rest. 

You give a pleasant twirl to your fingers as you 
saunter along the street, and say, — but not so loud 
as to be overheard, — " She is mine ; she is mine ! '* 

You wonder if IVank ever loved Nelly one half as 
well as you love Madge. You feel quite sure he 
never did. You can hardly conceive how it is that 
Madge has not been seized before now by scores of 
enamored men, and borne off, like the Sabine women 
in Roman history. You chuckle over your future, 
like a boy who has found a guinea in groping for 
sixpences. You read over the marriage service, — 
thinking of the time when you will take lier hand, 
and slip the ring upon her finger, — and repeat, after 
the clergyman, "for richer — for poorer; for better 
— for worse!" A great deal of "worse" there v/ill 
be about it, you think. 

Through all, your heart cleaves to that sweet 
image of the beloved Madge, as light cleaves to day. 
The weeks leap with a bound ; and the months only 
grow long when you approach that day which is to 
make her yours. There are no flowers rare enough 
to make bouquets for her; diamonds are too dim 
for her to wear ; pearls are tame. 



CHEER AND CHILDREN, 233 

And after marriage the weeks are even shorter 

than before : you wonder why on earth all the single 
men in the world do not rush tumultuously to the 
Altar ; you look upon them all as a travelled man 
will look upon some conceited Dutch boor who has 
never been beyond the limits of his cabbage-garden. 
Married men, on the contrary, you regard as fellow- 
voyagers ; and look upon their wives — ugly as they 
may be — as better than none. 

You blush a little at telling your butcher for the 
first time what *'your wife" would like ; you bargain 
with the grocer for sugars and teas, and wonder if 
he knows that you are a married man. You practise 
your new way of talk upon your office-boy : you tell 
him that " your wife " expects you home to dinner ; 
and are astonished that he does not stare to hear 
you say it. 

You wonder if the people in the omnibus know 
that Madge and you are just married ; and if the 
driver knows that the shilhng you hand to him is for 
''self and wife." You wonder if anybody was ever 
so happy before, or ever will be so happy again. 

You enter your name upon the hotel books as 

" Clarence and Wife " ; and come back to look at 

it, wondering if anybody else has noticed it, — and 
thinking that it looks remarkably well. You cannot 
help thinking that every third man you meet in the 



234 DREAM-LIFE. 

hall wishes he possessed your wife ; nor do you 
think it very sinful in him to wish it. You fear it 
is placing temptation in the way of covetous men to 
put Madge's Httle gaiters outside the chamber-door 
at night. 

Your home, when it is entered, is just what it 
should be, — quiet, small, — with everything she 
wishes, and nothing more than she wishes. The sun 
strikes it in the happiest possible way ; the piano 
is the sweetest-toned in the world ; the library is 
stocked to a charm ; — and Madge, that blessed 
wife, is there, adorning and giving life to it all. To 
think even of her possible death is a suffering you 
class with the infernal tortures of the Inquisition. 
You grow twin of heart and of purpose. Smiles 
seem made for marriage ; and you wonder how you 
ever wore them before. 

So a year and more wears off of mingled home- 
life, visiting, and travel. 

And now a new hope and joy lightens home : 

there is a child there. What a joy to be a father ! 

What new emotions crowd the eye with tears, and 
make the hand tremble ! What a benevolence radi- 
ates from you toward the nurse, — toward the phy- 
sician, — toward everybody ! What a holiness and 
sanctity of love grows upon your old devotion to 



CHEER AND CHILDREN, 235 

that wife of your bosom — the mother of your 
child ! 

The excess of joy seems almost to blur the stories 
of happiness which attach to heaven. You are now 
joined, as you were never joined before, to the great 
family of man. Your name and blood will live after 
you ; nor do you once think (what father can V) but 
that it will live honorably and well. 

With what a new ak you walk the streets ! With 
what a triumph you speak, in your letter to Nelly, of 
" your family ! " Who, that has not felt it, knows 
what it is to be "a man of family !" 

How weak now seem all the imaginations of your 
single life ; what bare, dry skeletons of the realit}^ 
they furnished ! You pity the poor fellows who have 
no wives or children — from your soul ; you count 
their smiles as empty smiles, put on to cover the 
lack that is in them. You compassionate them 
deeply ; you think them worthy objects of some 
charitable association ; you would cheerfully buy 
tracts for them, if they would but read them, — 
tracts on marriage and children. There is a free- 
masonry among fathers they know nothing of. 

And then " the boy," — such a boy ! 

There was a time when you thought all babies 
very much alike ; — alike ? Is your boy like any- 
tliing, except the wonderful fellow that he is? Was 



236 DREAM-LIFE, 

there ever a baby seen, or even read of, like tbat 
baby! 

Look at him : pick him up in his long, white 

gown : he may have an excess of color, — but such a 
pretty color ! he is a little pouty about the mouth, 
— but such a mouth ! His hair is a little scant, and 
he is rather wandering in the eye, — but. Good 
Heavens, what an eye ! 

There was a time when you thought it very absurd 
for fathers to talk about their children ; but it does 
not seem at all absurd now. You think, on the con- 
trary, that 3'our old friends, who used to sup with 
you at the club, would be delighted to know how 
your baby is getting on, and how much he measures 
around the calf of the leg. If they pay you a visit, 
you are quite sure they are in an agony to see Frank ; 
and you hold the little squirming fellow in your 
arms, half conscience-smitten for provoking them to 
such envy as they must be suflering. You make a 
settlement upon the boy with a chuckle, — as if you 
were treating yourself to a mint-julep, instead of 
conveying away a few thousands of seven per cents. 

Then the boy develops astonishingly. What 

a head, — what a foot, — what a voice ! And he is 
so quiet withal, — never known to ciy, except under 
such provocation as would draw tears from a heart 
of adamant ; in short, for the first six months he is 



CHEER AND CHILDREN. 237 

never anything but gentle, patient, earnest, loving, 
intellectual, and magnanimous. You are half afraid 
that some of the physicians will be reporting the 
case, as one of the most remarkable instances of per- 
fect moral and physical development on record. 

But the years roll on, in the which your extrava- 
gant fancies die into the earnest maturity of a father's 
love. You struggle gayly with the cares that life 
brings to your door. You feel the strength of three 
beings in your single arm ; and feel your heart 
warming toward God and man with the added 
Avarmth of two other loving and trustful beings. 

How eagerly you watch the first tottering step of 
that boy ; how you riot in the joy and pride that 
swell in that mother's eyes, as they follow his feeble, 
staggering motions ! Can God bless his creatures 
more than he has blessed that dear Madge and you ? 
Has Heaven even richer joys than live in that home 
of yours ? 

By-and-by he speaks ; and minds tie together by 
language, as the hearts have long tied by looks. He 
wanders with you feebly, and with slow, wandering 
paces, upon the verge of the great universe of 
thought. His little eye sparkles with some vague 
fancy that comes upon him first by language. 
Madge teaches him the words of affection and of 
thankfulness; and she teaches him to lisp infant 



238 DREAM-LIFE. 

prayer ; and by secret pains (how could she be so 
secret ?) instructs him in some little phrase of en- 
dearment that she knows will touch your heart ; and 
then she watches your coming ; and the little fellow 
runs toward you, and warbles out his lesson of love 
in tones that forbid you any answer, — save only 
those brimming eyes, turned first on her, and then 
on him, — and poorly concealed by the quick em- 
brace, and the kisses which you shower in trans- 
port. 

Still slip on the years, like brimming bowls of nec- 
tar. Another Madge is sister to Frank ; and a Httle 
Nelly is younger sister to this other Madge. 

Three of them : a charmed and mystic num- 
ber, which, if it be broken in these young days, — as, 
alas, it may be, — will only yield a cherub angel to 
float over you, and to float over them, — to wean 
you, and to wean them, from this world, where all 
joys do perish, to that seraph world where joys do 
last forever. 



VI. 

A Dream of Darkness, 

IS our life a sun, that it should radiate light and 
heat forever ? Do not the calmest and bright- 
est days of autumn show clouds, that drift their rag- 
ged edges over the golden disk, and bear down swift 
with their weight of vapors, until the sun's whole 
surface is shrouded ; and you can see no shadow of 
tree or flower upon the land, because of the greater 
and gulfing shadow of the cloud ? 

Will not life bear me out ; will not truth, earnest 
and stern, around me make good the terrible imag- 
ination that now comes swooping, heavily and dark- 
ly, upon my brain ? 

You are living in a little village not far away from 
the city. It is a graceful and luxurious home that 
you possess. The holly and the laurel gladden its 
lawn in Winter ; and bowers of blossoms sweeten it 



240 DREAM-LIFE, 

through all the Summer. You know each day of 
your return from the town, where first you will catch 
sight of that graceful figure flitting like a shadow of 
love beneath the trees ; you know well w^here you will 
meet the joyous and noisy welcome of stout Frank, 
and of tottling Nelly. Day after day and week after 
week they fail not. 

A friend sometimes attends you ; and a friend to 
you is always a friend to Madge. In the city you fall 
in once more with your old acquaintance Dalton, 
— the graceful, winning, yet dissolute man that his 
youth promised. He wishes to see your cottage 
home. Your heart half hesitates ; yet it seems folly 
to cherish distrust of a boon companion in so many 
of your revels. 

Madge receives him with that sweet smile which 
w^elcomes all your friends. He gains the heart of 
Frank by talking of his toys and of his pigeons ; and 
he wins upon the tenderness of the mother by his at- 
tentions to the child. Even you repent of your pass- 
ing shadow of dislike, and feel your heart warming 
toward him as he takes little Nelly in his arms and 
provokes her joyous prattle. 

Madge is unbounded in her admu'ation of your 
friend : he renews, at your solicitation, his visit : he 
proves kinder than ever ; and you grow ashamed 
of your distrust. 



A DREAM OF DARKNESS. 241 

Madge is not learned in the arts of a city life ; the 
accompHshments of a man-of-the world are almost 
new to her ; she listens with eagerness to Dalton's 
gi-aphic stories of foreign fetes and luxury ; she is 
charmed with his clear, bold voice, and with his 
manly execution of little operatic airs. 

She is beautiful, — that wife who has made 

your heart whole by its division, — fearfully beauti- 
ful. And she is not cold, or impassive : her heart, 
though fond and earnest, is yet human ; — we are 
all human. The accomplishments and graces of the 
world must needs take hold upon her fancy. And a 
fear creeps over you that you dare not whisper, — 
that those graces may cast into the shade your own 
yearning and silent tenderness. 

But this is a selfish fear, that you think you have 
no right to cherish. She takes pleasure in the 
society of Dalton, — what right have you to say her 
— nay ? His character indeed is not altogether such 
as you could wish ; but mil it not be selfish to tell 
her even this ? WiU it not be even worse, and show 
taint of a lurking suspicion, which you know would 
wound her grievously ? You struggle with your dis- 
trust by meeting him more kindly than ever ; yet at 
times there will steal over you a sadness, which that 
dear Madge detects, and sorrowing in her turn, 
tries to draw away from you by the touching kind- 
16 



242 DREAM-LIFE, 

ness of sympathy. Her look and manner kill all 
your doubt ; and you show that it is gone, and 
piously conceal the cause by welcoming in gayer 
tones than ever the man who has fostered it by his 
j)resence. 

Business calls you away to a great distance from 
home : it is the first long parting of your real man- 
hood. And can suspicion, or a fear, lurk amid those 
tearful embraces ? Not one, — thank God, — not one ! 

Your letters, frequent and earnest, bespeak your 
increased devotion ; and the embraces you bid her 
give to the sweet ones of your little flock, tell of the 
calmness and sufficiency of your love. Her letters 
too are running over with affection ; — what though 
she mentions the frequent visits of Dalton, and tells 
stories of his kindness and attachment? You feel 
safe in her strength ; and yet — yet there is a 
brooding terror, that rises out of your knowledge 
of Dalton's character. 

And can you tell her this ; can you chill her fond- 
ness, now that you are away, with even a hint of 
what would crush her delicate nature ? 

What you know to be love, and what you fancy 
to be duty, struggle long ; but love conquers. And 
with sweet trust in her, and double trust in God, 
you await your return. That return will be speed- 
ier than you think. 



A DREAM OF DARKNESS. 243 

You receive one day a letter : it is addressed in 
the hand of a friend, who is often at the cottage, but 
who has rarely written to you. What can have 
tempted him now? Has any harm come near 
your home? No wonder your hands tremble at 
the opening of that sheet; no wonder that your 
eyes run like lightning over the hurried lines. Yet 
there is little in them, very little. The hand is 
stout and fair. It is a calm letter, a friendly letter ; 
but it is short, terribly short. It bids you come 
home — "at once ! " 

And you go. It is a pleasant country you 

have to travel through ; but you see very little of 
the country. It is a dangerous voyage, perhaps, 
you have to make ; but you think very little of the 
danger The creaking of the timbers, and the lash- 
ing of the waves, are quieting music compared with 
the storm of your raging fears. All the while you 
associate Dalton with the terror that seems to hang 
over you ; and yet, your trust in Madge is true as 
Heaven ! 

At length you approach that home : there lies 
your cottage resting sweetly upon its hill-side ; 
and the autumn winds are soft ; and the maple-tops 
sway gracefully, all clothed in the scarlet of their 
frost-dress. Once again as the sun sinks behind 
the mountain with a trail of glory, and the violet 



244 DREAM-LIFE. 

haze tints the gray clouds like so many robes of 
angels, you take heart and courage, and with firm 
reliance on the Providence that fashions all forms of 
beauty, whether in heaven or in heart, your fears 
spread out, and vanish with the waning twilight. 

She is not at the cottage-door to meet you ; she 
does not expect you ; and yet your bosom heaves, 
and your breathing is quick. Your friend meets 
you, and shakes your hand. — "Clarence," he says, 
with the tenderness of an old friend, — "be a man ! " 

Alas, you are a man ; — with a man's heart, and a 
man's fear, and a man's agony ! Little Frank comes 
bounding toward you joyously — yet under traces of 
tears : — " Oh, papa, mother is gone ! " 

" Gone ! " And you turn to the face of your 

friend ; it is well he is near by, or you would have 
fallen. 

He can tell you very little ; he has known the 
character of Dalton ; he has seen with fear his as- 
siduous attentions — tenfold multiplied since your 
leave. He has trembled for the issue : this very 
morning he observed a travelling can-iage at the 
door ; — they drove away together. You have no 
strength to question him. You see that he fears 
the worst : he does not know Madge so well as you. 

And can it be ? Are you indeed widowed 

with that most terrible of widowhoods? Is your 



A DREAM OF DARKNESS, 245 

wife living, and yet — lost ! Talk not to such a man 
of the woes of sickness, of poverty, of death ; he will 
laugh at your mimicry of grief. 

All is blackness ; whichever way you turn, it 

is the same ; there is no light ; your eye is put out ; 
your soul is desolate forever. The heart by which 
you had grown up into the full stature of joy and 
blessing, is rooted out of you, and thrown hke some- 
thing loathsome, at which the carrion dogs of the 
world scent and snuffle. 

They will point at you, as the man who has lost 
all that he prized ; and she has stolen it, whom he 
prized more than what was stolen. And he, the 

accursed miscreant But no, it can never be : 

Madge is as true as Heaven ! 

Yet she is not there : whence comes the light that 
is to cheer you ? 

Your children ? 

. Ay, your children, — your little Nelly, — your no- 
ble Frank, — they are yours, — doubly, trebly, ten- 
fold yours, now that she, their mother, is a mother 
no more to them forever. 

Ay, close your doors ; shut out the world ; draw 
close your curtains ; fold them to your heart, — your 
crushed, bleeding, desolate heart. Lay your fore- 
head to the soft cheek of your noble boy ; — beware, 
beware how you dampen that damask cheek with 



246 DREAM-LIFE. 

your scalding tears : yet you cannot help it ; they 
fall — great drops — a river of them, as you gather 
him convulsively to your bosom. 

" Father, why do you cry so ? " says Frank, with 
the tears of dreadful sympathy starting from those 
eyes of childhood. 

" Why, papa ? " — mimes Httle Nelly. 

Answer them, if you dare ! Try it ; — what 

words — blundering, weak words — choked with ag- 
ony — leading nowhere — ending in new and convul- 
sive clasps of your weeping, motherless children ! 

Had she gone to her grave, there would have been 
a holy joy, a great and swelling grief indeed, — but 
your wrenched heart would have found a rest in the 
quiet churchyard ; and your feehngs, rooted in that 
cherished grave, would have stretched toward Heav- 
en, and caught the dews of His grace, who watch- 
eth the lilies. But now, — with your heart cast 
underfoot, or buffeted on the lips of a lying world, 
— finding no shelter and no abiding place — alas, 
we do guess at infinitude only by suffering ! 

Madge, Madge ! can this be so ? Are you 

not stiU the same sweet, guileless child of Heaven ? 



vn. 

Peace. 

IT is a dream, — fearful, to be sure, but only a 
dream : Madge is true. That soul is honest * 
it could not be otherwise. God never made it to 
be false ; He never made the suu for darkness. 

And before the evening has waned to midnight, 
sweet day has broken on your gloom ; — Madge is 
folded to your bosom, sobbing fearfully, — not for 
guilt, or any shadow of guilt, but for the agony she 
reads upon your brow, and in your low sighs. 

The mystery is all cleared by a few lightning 
words from her indignant lips, and her whole figure 
trembles, as she shrinks within your embrace, with 
the thought of that great evil that seemed to shadow 
you. The villain has sought by every art to beguile 
her into appearances which should compromise her 
character, and so wound her delicacy as to take away 



248 DREAM-LIFE, 

the courage for return ; he has even wrought upon 
her affection for you as his master-weapon : a skil- 
fully contrived story of some accident that had 
befallen you, had wrought upon her — to the sudden 
and silent leave of home. But he has failed. At 
the first suspicion of his falsity, her dignity and 
virtue shivered all his malice. She shudders at the 
bare thought of that fiendish scheme which has so 
lately broken on her view. 

" Oh, Clarence, Clarence, could you for one mo- 
ment believe this of me ? " 

" Dear Madge, forgive me if a dreamy horror did 
for an instant palsy my better thought ; — it is gone 
utterly ; it will never, never come again ! " 

And there she leans with her head pillowed on 
your shoulder, the same pure angel that has led 
you in the way of light, and who is still your bless- 
ing and your pride. 

He — and you forbear to name his name — is 
gone, — flying vainly from the consciousness of 
guilt with the curse of Cain upon him, — hastening 
toward the day when Satan shall clutch his own. 

A heavenly peace descends upon you that night, — 
all the more sacred and cahn for the fearful agony 
that has gone before. A Heaven, that seemed lost, 
is yours. A love, that you had almost doubted, is 
beyond all suspicion. A heart, that in the madness 



PEACE, 249 

of your frenzy you had dared to question, you 
worship now, with blushes of shame. You thank 
God for this great goodness, as you never thanked 
him for any earthly blessing before ; and with this 
twin gratitude lying on your hearts, and clearing 
your face to smiles, you live on together the old hfe 
of joy and of affection. 

Again with brimming nectar the years fill up their 
vases. Your children grow into the same earnest 
joyousness, and with the same home faith, which 
Hghtened upon your young dreams, and toward 
which you seem to go back, as you riot with them 
in their Christmas joys, or upon the velvety lawn of 
June. 

Anxieties indeed overtake you, but they are those 
anxieties which only the selfish would avoid, — anx- 
ieties that better the heart with a great weight of 
tenderness. It may be that your mischievous Frank 
runs wild with the swift blood of boyhood, and that 
the hours are long which wait his coming. It may 
be that your heart echoes in silence the mother's 
sobs, as she watches his fits of waywardness, and 
showers upon his very neglect excess of love. 

Danger perhaps creeps upon little, joyous Nelly, 
which makes you tremble for her hfe ; the mother's 
tears are checked that she may not deepen your 



250 DREAM-LIFE. 

grief ; and her care guards the Httle sufferer hke a 
Providence. The nights hang long and heavy ; dull, 
stifled breathing wakes the chamber with ominous 
sound ; the mother's eye scarce closes, but rests 
with fond sadness upon the little struggling victim 
of sickness ; her hand rests like an angel touch 
upon the brow, all beaded with the heats of fever ; 
the straggling, gray light of morning breaks through 
the crevices of the closed blinds, — bringing stir 
and bustle to the world, but in your home — light- 
ing only the darkness. 

Hope, sinking in the mother's heart, takes hold 
on Faith in God ; and her prayer, and her placid 
look of submission, — more than all your philoso- 
phy, — add strength to your faltering courage. 

But little Nelly brightens ; her faded features take 
on bloom again ; she knows you ; she presses your 
hand ; she draws down your cheek to her parched 
lip ; she kisses you, and smiles. The mother's 
brow loses its shadow ; day dawns within as well 
as without, and on bended knees God is thanked. 

Perhaps poverty faces you ; — your darling 
schemes break down. One by one, with failing 
heart, you strip the luxuries from life. But the 
sorrow which oppresses you is not the selfish sor- 
row which the lone man feels : it is far nobler ; its 
chiefest mourning is over the despoiled home. 



PEACE. 251 

Frank must give up his promised travel ; Madge 
must lose her favorite pony ; Nelly must be denied 
her little ft,te upon the lawn. The home itself, en- 
deared by so many scenes of happiness and by so 
many of suffering, must be given up. It is hard, 
very hard, to tear away your wife from the flowers, 
the birds, the luxuries, that she has made so dear. 

Now she is far stronger than you. She contrives 
new joys ; she wears a holy calm ; she cheers by a 
new hopefulness ; she buries even the memory of 
luxury in the riches of the humble home that her 
wealth of heart endows. Her soul, catching radi- 
ance from that heavenly world where her hope lives, 
kindles amid the growing shadows, and sheds balm 
upon the httle griefs, — like the serene moon, slant- 
ing the dead sim's life, upon the night. 

Courage wakes in the presence of those depend- 
ent on your toiL Love arms your hand and quick- 
ens your brain. Resolutions break large fi*om the 
swelling soul. Energy leaps into your action like 
light. Gradually you bring back into your humble 
home a few traces of the luxury that once adorned 
it. That wife, whom it is youi- greatest pleasure to 
win to smiles, wears a half-sad look as she meets 
these proofs of love ; she fears that you are perilling 
too much for her pleasure. 

For the first time in life you deceive her. 



252 DREAM-LIFE. 

You have won wealth again ; you now step firmty 
upon your new-gained sandals of gold. But you 
conceal it from her. You contrive a little scheme 
of surprise, with Frank alone in the secret. 

You purchase again the old home ; you stock it, 
as far as may be, with the old luxuries ; a new harp 
is in the place of that one which beguiled so many 
hours of joy ; new and cherished flowers bloom 
again upon the windows ; her birds hang, and war- 
ble their melody where they warbled before. A 
pony — like as possible to the old — is there for 
Madge ; a file is secretly contrived upon the lawn. 
You even place the old, familiar books upon the 
parlor-table. 

The birthday of your own Madge is approaching, 
— a/c7e you never pass by without home rejoicings. 
You drive over with her upon that morning for an- 
other look at the old place ; a cloud touches her 
brow, — but she yields to your wish. An old ser- 
vant — whom you had known in better days — 
throws open the gates. 

"It is too, too sad," says Madge. "Let us 

go back, Clarence, to our own home ; — we are hap- 
py there." 

"A little farther, Madge." 

The wife steps slowly over what seems the sepul- 
chre of so many pleasures ; the children gambol as 



PEACE. 253 

of old, and pick flowers. But the mother checks 
them. 

" They are not ours now, my children ! " 

You stroll to the very door ; the goldfinches are 
hanging upon the wall ; the mignonette is in the 
window. You feel the hand of Madge trembling upon 
your arm ; she is struggling with her weakness. 

A tidy waiting-woman shows you into the old 
parlor : — there is a harjD ; and there, too, such 
books as we loved to read. 

Madge is overcome; now she entreats: — "Let 
us go away, Clarence ! " and she hides her face. 

" Never, dear Madge, never ! it is yours — all 

yours ! " 

She looks up in your face ; she sees your look of 
triumph ; she catches sight of Frank bursting in at 
the old hall-door all radiant with joy. 

" Frank ! — Clarence ! " — the tears forbid 

any more. 

*' God bless you, Madge ! God bless you ! " 

And thus in peace and in joy Manhood passes on 
into the third season of our life — even as golden 
Autumn sinks slowly into the tomb of Winter. 



WINTER; 

OR, 

THE DREAMS OF AGE, 



DREAMS OF AGE. 



Winter. 

SLOWLY, thickly, fastly, fall the snow-flakes,— 
like the seasons upon the life of man. At 
the first they lose themselves in the brown mat of 
herbage, or gently melt, as they fall upon the broad 
stepping-stone at the door. But as hour after hour 
passes, the feathery flakes stretch their white cloak 
plainly on the meadow, and chilling the doorstep 
with their multitude, cover it with a mat of pearl. 

The dried grass-tips pierce the mantle of white, 
like so many serried spears ; but as the storm goes 
softly on, they sink one by one to their snowy tomb, 
and presently show nothing of all their army, save 
one or two straggling banners of blackened and 
shrunken daisies. 
17 



258 DREAM-LIFE. 

Across the wide meadow that stretches from my 
window, I can see nothing of those hills which were 
so green in summer ; between me and them lie only 
the soft, slow-moving masses, filling the air with 
whiteness. I catch only a glimpse of one gaunt and 
bare-armed oak, looming through the feathery mul- 
titude like a tall ship's spars breaking through fog. 

The roof of the barn is covered ; and the leaking 
eaves show dark stains of water that trickle down 
the weather-beaten boards. The pear-trees, that 
wore such weight of greenness in the leafy Jmie, 
now stretch their bare arms to the snowy blast, and 
carry upon each tiny bough a narrow burden of 
winter. 

The old house-dog marches stately through the 
strange covering of earth, and seems to ponder on 
the welcome he will show, — and shakes the flakes 
from his long ears, and with a vain snap at a float- 
ing feather he stalks again to his dry covert in the 
shed. The lambs that belonged to the meadow 
flock, with their feeding-ground all covered, seem to 
wonder at their losses ; but take courage from the 
quiet air of the veteran sheep, and gambol after 
them, as they move sedately toward the shelter of 
the barn. 

The cat, driven from the kitchen-door, beats a 
coy retreat, with long reaches of her foot, upon the 



WINTER, 259 

yielding surface. The matronly hens saunter out 
at a little Ufting of the storm, and eye curiously, 
with heads half turned, their sinking steps, and then 
fall back, with a quiet cluck of satisfaction, to the 
wholesome gravel by the stable-door. 

By-and-by the snow-flakes pile more leisurely : 
they grow large and scattered, and come more 
slowly than before. The hills, that were brown, 
heave into sight — great, rounded billows of white. 
The gray woods look shrunken to half their height, 
and stand waving in the storm. The wind freshens, 
and scatters the light flakes that crown the burden 
of the snow ; and as the day droops, a clear, bright 
sky of steel color cleaves the land from the clouds, 
and sends down a chilling wind to bank the walls 
and to freeze the storm. The moon rises full and 
round, and plays with a joyous chill over the 
ghstening raiment of the land. 

I pile my fire with the clean-cleft hickory; and 
musing over some sweet story of the olden time, I 
wander into a rich realm of thought, until my eyes 
grow dim, and dreaming of battle and of prince, I 
fall to sleep in my old farm-chamber. 

At morning I find my dreams all written on the 
window in crystals of fairy shape. The cattle, one 
by one, with ears frost-tipped, and with frosted 
noses, wend their way to the watering-place in the 



26o DREAM-LIFE, 

meadow. One by one they drink, and crop at the 
stunted herbage which the warm spring keeps green 
and bare. 

A hound bays in the distance ; the smoke of cot- 
tages rises straight toward heaven ; a lazy jingle of 
sleigh-beUs wakens the quiet of the high-road ; and 
upon the hiUs the leafless woods stand low, like 
crouching armies, with guns and spears in rest ; and 
among them the scattered spiral pines rise hke ban- 
ner-men, uttering with their thousand tongues of 
green the proud war-cry — " God is with us!" 

But the sky of winter is as capricious as the sky 
of spring, even as the old wander in thought, like 
the vagaries of a boy. 

Before noon the heavens are mantled with a leaden 
gray ; the eaves, that leaked in the glow of the sun, 
now tell their tale of morning's warmth in crystal 
ranks of icicles. The cattle seek their shelter ; the 
few lingering leaves of the white-oaks rustle dismally ; 
the pines breathe sighs of mourning. As the night 
darkens, and deepens the storm, the house-dog bays ; 
the children crouch in the wide chimney-corners; 
the sleety rain comes in sharp gusts. And as I sit 
by the bright leaping blaze in my chamber, the scat- 
tered hail-drops beat upon my window, like the tap- 
pings of an Old Man's cane. 



What is Gone. 

GONE ! Did it ever strike you, my reader, how 
much meaning lies in that Httle monosyllable 
— gone ? 

Sa}^ it to yourself at nightfall, when the sun has 
sunk under the hills, and the crickets chirp, — 
"gone." Say it to yourself when the night is far 
over, and you wake with some sudden start from 
pleasant dreams, — " gone." Say it to yourself in 
some country churchyard, where your father, or 
your mother, sleeps under the blooming violets of 
spring, — "gone." Say it in your sobbing prayer 
to Heaven, as you cling lovingly, but oh, how vainly, 
to the hand of your sweet wife, — " gone ! " 

Ay, is there not meaning in it ? And now, what 
is gone, — or rather what is not gone ? Childhood 
is gone, with all its blushes and fairness, — with all 



262 DREAM-LIFE. 

its health and wantoning, — with all its smiles like 
glimpses of heaven, and all its tears which were but 
the suffusion of joy. 

Youth is gone, — bright, hopeful youth, when you 
counted the years with jewelled numbers, and hung 
lamps of ambition on your path, which lighted the 
palace of renown ; when the days were woven into 
weeks of blithe labor, and the weeks were rolled 
into harvest months of triumph, and the months 
were bound into golden sheaves of years, — all 
gone. 

The strength and pride of manhood is gone ; your 
heart and soul have stamped their deepest dye ; the 
time of power is past ; your manliness has told its 
tale : henceforth your career is down ; — hitherto 
you have jom-neyed wp. You look back upon a 
decade as you once looked upon a half score of 
months ; a year has become to your slackened mem- 
ory, and to your dull perceptions, like a week of 
childhood. Suddenly and smftly come past you 
great whirls of gone-by thought, and wrecks of vain 
labor, eddying upon the stream that rushes to the 
grave. The sweeping outlines of life, that lay once 
before the vision, — rolling into wide billows of years, 
like easy lifts of a broad mountain-range, — now 
seem close-packed together as with a Titan hand, and 
you see only crowded, craggy heights, — like Alpine 



WHAT IS GONE. 263 

fastnesses, — parted with glaciers of grief, and leak- 
ing abundant tears. 

Your friends are gone ; they who counselled and 
advised you, and who protected your weakness, will 
guard it no more forever. One by one they have 
dropped away as you have journeyed on ; and yet your 
journey does not seem a long one. Life at the longest 
is but a bubble that bursts so soon as it is rounded. 

Nelly — your sweet sister, to whom your heart 
clung so fondly in the young days, and to whom it 
has clung ever since in the strongest bonds of com- 
panionship — is gone — with the rest. 

Your thought — wayward now, and flickering — 
runs over the old days with quick and fevered step ; 
it brings back, faintly as it may, the noisy joys, and 
the safety, that belonged to the old garret-roof ; it 
figures again the image of that calm-faced father, — 
long since sleeping beside your mother ; it rests like 
a shadow upon the night when Charlie died ; it 
gi-asps the old figures of the school-room, and kindles 
again (how strange is memory) the fire that shed its 
lustre upon the curtains, and the ceiling, as you lay 
groaning with your first hours of sickness. 

Your flitting recollection brings back with gushes 
of exultation the figure of that little, blue-e^^ed 
hoyden, — Madge, — as she came with her work to 
pass the long evenings with Nelly ; it calls again the 



264 DREAM-LIFE. 

shy glances that you cast upon her, and your ndive 
ignorance of all the little counter-play that might 
well have passed between Frank and Nelly. Your 
mother's form too, clear and distinct, comes upon 
the wave of your rocking thought : her smile touches 
you now in age as it never touched you in boyhood. 

The image of that fair Miss Dalton, who led your 
fancy into such mad captivity, glides across your 
vision hke the fragment of a crazy dream long- 
gone by. The country home, where lived the grand- 
father of Frank, gleams kindly in the sunlight of 
your memory ; and still, poor, blind Fanny — ■ long 
since gathered to that rest where her closed eyes will 
open upon visions of joy — draws forth a sigh of pity. 

Then comes up that sweetest and brightest vision 
of love, and the doubt and care which ran before 
it, — when your ho^De groped eagerly through your 
pride and woridliness toward the sainted j)urity of 
her whom you know to be — all too good ; — when 
3^ou trembled at the thought of your own vices and 
blackness in the presence of her who seemed virtue's 
self. And even now your old heart bounds with joy 
as you recall the first timid assurance that you were 
blessed in the possession of her love, and that you 
might live under her smiles. 

Your thought runs rapturously over the calm joy 
that followed you through so many years, — to the 



WHAT IS GONE. 265 

prattling children, who were there to bless your 
path. How poor seem now your transports, as you 
met their childish embraces, and mingled in their 
childish employ ; how utterly weak the actual, when 
compared with that glow of affection which memory 
lends to the scene ! 

Yet all tliis is gone ; and the anxieties are gone, 
which knit your heart so strongly to those children, 
and to her — the mother ; — anxieties which dis- 
tressed you, — which you would eagerly have shun- 
ned, yet whose memory you would not now bargain 
away for a king's ransom. What were the sunlight 
worth, if clouds did not sometimes hide its bright- 
ness ; what were the Spring, or the Summer, if the 
lessons of the chilling Winter did not teach us the 
story of their warmth ? 

The days are gone too, in which you may have 
hngered under the sweet suns of Italy, — with the 
cherished one beside you, and the eager children, 
learning new prattle in the soft language of those 
Eastern lands. The evenings are gone, in which 
you loitered under the trees with those dear ones 
under the light of a harvest-moon, and talked of 
your blooming hopes, and of the stirring x^lans of 
your manhood. There are no more ambitious 
hopes, no more sturdy plans. Life's work has 
rounded into the evening that shortens labor. 



266 DREAM-LIFE. 

And as you loiter in dreams over the wide waste 
of what is gone, — a mingled array of griefs and of 
joys, of failures and of triumphs, — you bless God 
that there has been so much of joy belonging to 
your shattered life ; and you pray God, with the 
vain fondness that belongs to a parent's heart, that 
more of joy, and less of toil, may come near to the 
cherished ones who bear up your hope and name. 

With your silent prayer come back the old teach- 
ings, and vagaries of the boyish heart in its reaches 
toward Heaven. You recall the old church-reckon- 
ing of your goodness : is there much more of it now 
than then ? Is not Heaven just as high, and the 
world as sadly broad ? 

Alas, for the poor tale of goodness which age 
brings to the memory ! There may be crowning 
acts of benevolence, shining here and there ; but 
the margin of what has not been done is very broad. 
How weak and msignificant seems the story of life's 
goodness and profit, v/hen Death begins to slant 
liis shadow upon the soul. How infinite in the 
comparison seems that Eternal goodness which is 
crowned with mercy. How self vanishes, hke a 
blasted thmg, and only lives — if it lives at all — in 
the glow of that redeeming light which radiates 
from the Cross and the Throne. 



n. 

What is Left. 

BUT much as there is gone of life, and of its joys, 
very much remains, — very much in earnest, 
and very much more in hope. Still you see visions, 
and you dream dreams, of the times that are to 
come. 

Your home and heart are left ; within that home, 
the old Bible holds its wonted place, which w^as the 
monitor of your boyhood ; and now, more than ever, 
it prompts those reverent reaches of the spirit, which 
go beyond even the track of dreams. 

That cherished Madge, the partner of your life 
and joy, still lingers, though her step is feeble, and 
her eyes are dimmed ; — not as once attracting you 
by any outward show of beauty ; your heart, glow- 
ing through the memory of a life of joy, needs no 
such stimulant to the affections. Your hearts are 



268 DREAM-LIFE. 

knit together by a habit of growth, and a unanimity 
of desire. There is less to remind of the vanities of 
earth, and more to quicken the hopes of a time 
when body yields to spirit. 

Your own poor, battered hulk wants no jaunty- 
trimmed craft for consort; but twin of heart and 
soul, as you are twin of years, you float tranquilly 
toward that haven which lies before us all. 

"Your children, now almost verging on maturity, 
bless your hearth and home. Not one is gone. 
Frank indeed — that wild fellow, who has wrenched 
your heart with perplexing anxieties again and again, 
as you have seen the waywai^d dashes of his young 
blood — is often away. But his heart yet centres 
where yours centres ; and his absence is only a 
nearer and bolder strife with that fierce world whose 
circumstances every man of force and energy is born 
to conquer. 

His return from time to time with that proud fig- 
ure of opening manliness, and that full flush of 
health, speaks to your affections as you could never 
have believed it would. It is not for a man, who is 
the father of a man, to show any weakness of the 
heart, or any over-sensitiveness, in those ties which 
bind him to his kin. And yet — yet, as you sit by 
your fireside, with your clear, gray eye feasting in 
its feebleness on that proud figure of a man who 



WHAT IS LEFT. 269 

calls you "father," — and as you see his fond and 
loving attentions to that one who has been your 
partner in all anxieties and joys, there is a throb- 
bing within your bosom that makes you almost wish 
him young again, — that you might embrace him 
now, as when he warbled in your rejoicing ear those 
first words of love ! Ah, how little does a son know 
the secret and craving tenderness of a parent — how 
little conception has he of those silent bursts of 
fondness and of joy which attend his coming, and 
which crown his parting ! 

There is young Madge too, — dark-eyed, tall, with 
a pensive shadow resting on her face, — the very 
image of refinement and of dehcacy. She is thought- 
ful ; — not breaking out, like the mischievous, flax- 
haired Nelly, into bursts of joy and singing, — but 
stealing upon your heart with a gentle and quiet 
tenderness that diffuses itself throughout the house- 
hold like a soft zephyr of Summer. 

There are friends too yet left, who come in upon 
your evening hours, and light up the loitering time 
with dreamy story of the years that are gone. How 
eagerly you Hsten to some gossiping veteran friend, 
who with his deft words calls up the thread of some 
by-gone years of Hfe ; and mth what a careless, yet 
grateful recognition you lapse, as it were, into the 
current of the past, and live over again by your hos- 



2 70 DREAM-LIFE. 

pitable blaze tlie stir, the joy, and tlie pride of your 
lost manhood. 

The children of friends too have grown upon your 
march, and come to welcome you with that reverent 
deference which always touches the heart of age. 
That wild boy Will, — the son of a dear friend, — who 
but a little while ago was worrying you with Ms 
boyish pranks, has now shot up into tall and grace- 
ful youth, and evening after evening finds him mak- 
ing part of your little household group. 

Does the fond old man think that he is all 

the attraction ? 

It may be that in your dreamy speculations about 
the future of your children, (for still you dream,) you 
think that "Will may possibly become the husband 
of the sedate and kindly Madge. It worries you to 
find Nelly teasing him as she does ; that mad hoy- 
den will never be quiet ; she provokes you exces- 
sively : and yet she is a dear creature ; there is no 
meeting those laughing blue eyes of hers without a 
smile and an embrace. 

It pleases you however to see the winning frank- 
ness with which Madge always receives "Will. And 
with a little of your old vanity of observation you 
trace out the growth of their dawning attachment. 
It provokes you to find Nelly breaking up their quiet 
tete-d-tetes with her provoking sallies, and drawing 



WHAT IS LEFT. 271 

away Will to some saunter in the garden, or to some 
mad gallop over the hills. 

At length upon a certain summer's day Will asks 
to see you. He approaches with a doubtful and dis- 
turbed look ; you fear that wild Nell has been 
teasing him with her pranks. Yet he wears not so 
much an offended look as one of fear. You wonder 
if it ever happened to you to carry your hat in just 
that timid manner, and to wear such a shifting ex- 
pression of the eye, as poor Will wears just now ? 
You wonder if it ever happened to you to begin to 
talk with an old friend of your father's in just that 
abashed way ? Will must have fallen into some sad 
scrape. — ^Well, he is a good fellow, and you will help 
him out of it. 

You look up as he goes on with his story ; — you 
grow perplexed yourself ; — you scarce believe your 
own ears. 

" NeUy ? " — Is Will talking of NeUy ? 

"Yes, sir,— NeUy." 

"What! — and you have told all this to 



Nelly — that you love her ? " 

*'I have, sir." 

"And she says" — 

" That I must speak with you, sir.* 

" Bless my soul ! — But she's a good gui " ; — and 
the old man wipes his eyes. 



272 DREAM-LIFE. 
" Nell ! — are you there ? " 



And she comes, — blushing, lingering, yet smiling 
through it all. 

" And you could deceive your old father, 

Nell " — (very fondly). 

Nelly only clasps your hand in both of hers. 

" And so you loved Will all the while ? " 

Nolly only stoops to drop a Httle kiss of 

pleading on your forehead. 

<« Well, Nelly," (it is hard to speak roundly,) 

"give me your hand; — here. Will, — take it: — 
she's a wild girl ; — be kind to her. Will." 

" God bless you, sir ! " 

And Nelly throws herself, sobbing, upon your 
bosom. 

" Not here, — not here now, Nell ! — Will is 

yonder ! " 

Sobbing, sobbing still! Nelly, Nelly, — who 

would have thought that your merry face covered 
such a heart of tenderness. 



m. 

Grief and Joy of Age, 

TBTE Winter has its piercing storms, — even as 
Autumn hath. Hoary age, crowned with 
honor and with years, bears no immunity from suf- 
fering. This is the common heritage of us all : if it 
come not in the spring or in the summer of our day, 
it will surely find us in the autumn, or amid the 
frosts of winter. It is the penalty humanity pays 
for pleasure ; human joys will have their balance. 
Nature never makes false weight. The east wind is 
followed by a wind from the west ; and every smile 
will have its equivalent in a tear. 

You have lived long and joyously with that dear 
one who has made your life a holy pilgrimage. She 
has seemed to lead you into ways of pleasantness, 
and has kindled in you — as the damps of the 

world came near to extinguish them — those hopes 
i8 



274 DREAM-LIFE. 

and aspirations which rest not in life, but soar to 
the realm of spirits. 

You have sometimes shuddered with the thought of 
parting ; you have trembled even at the leave-taking 
of a year, or of months, and have suffered bitterly 
as some danger threatened a parting forever. That 
danger threatens now. Nor is it a sudden fear to 
startle you into a paroxysm of dread : nothing of 
this. Nature is kinder, — or she is less kind. 

It is a slow and certain approach of danger which 
you read in the feeble step, — in the wan eye, light- 
ing up from time to time into a brightness that 
seems no longer of this world. You read it in the 
new and ceaseless attentions of the fond child, who 
yet blesses your home, and who conceals from you 
the bitterness of the coming grief. 

Frank is away — over-seas ; and as the mother 
mentions that name with a tremor of love and of re- 
gret, that he is not now with you all, — you recall 
that other death, when you too were not there. 
Then, you knew little of a parent's feeling ; now, its 
intensity is present. 

Day after day, as summer passes, she is ripening 
for that world where her faith and her hope have so 
long lived. Her pressure of your hand at some 
casual parting for a day is full of a gentle warning, 
as if she said, — prex^are for a longer adieu ! 



GRIEF AND JOY OF AGE. 275 

Her language, too, without direct mention steeps 
your thought in the bitter certainty that she foresees 
her approaching doom, and that she dreads it only 
so far as she dreads the grief that will be left in 
her broken home. Madge — the daughter — glides 
through the duties of that household hke an angel 
of mercy : she lingers at the sick-bed, — blessing, 
and taking blessings. 

The sun shines warmly without, and through the 
open casement beats warmly upon the floor within. 
The birds sing in the joyousness of full-robed Sum- 
mer ; the drowsy hum of the bees, who are stealing 
sweets from the honeysuckle that bowers the win- 
dow, gives its lull to the atmosphere. Her breath- 
ing scarce breaks the summer stillness. Yet, she 
knows it is nearly over. Madge, too, — with feat- 
ures saddened, yet struggling against grief, — feels 

— that it is nearly over. 

It is very hard to think it ; how much harder to 
know it ! But there is no mistaking her look now 

— so i)lacid, so gentle, so resigned. And her grasp 
of your hand — so warm — so full of meaning. 

"Madge, Madge, must it bo?" And a 

pleasant smile lights her eye ; and her grasp is 
warmer ; and her look is — upward. 

"Must it— -must it be, dear Madge ?" — A 



276 DREAM-LIFE. 

holier smile, — loftier, — lit up of angels, beams on 
her faded features. The hand relaxes its clasp, and 
you cling to it faster — harder, — joined close to 
the frail wreck of your love, — joined tightly — but 
oh, how far apart ! 

But sorrow, however great it be, must be subdued 
in the presence of a child. Its fevered outbursts 
must be kept for those silent hours when no young 
eyes are watching, and no young hearts will " catch 
the trick of grief." 

When the household is quiet and darkened, — 
when Madge is away from you, and your boy Frank 
slumbering — as youth slumbers upon sorrow, — 
when you are alone with God and the night, — in 
that room so long hallowed by her presence, but 
now — deserted — silent, — then you may yield 
yourself to such frenzy of tears as your strength will 
let you. And in your solitary rambles through the 
churchyard you can loiter of a summer's noon over 
her fresh-made grave, and let your pent heart speak, 
and your spirit lean toward the Kest where her love 
has led you. 

Thornton, the clergyman, whose prayer over the 
dead has dwelt with you, comes from time to time 
to light up your solitary hearth with his talk of the 
Rest for all men. He is young, but his earnest and 
gentle speech win their way to your heart, and to 



GRIEF AND JOY OF AGE. 277 

your understanding. You love his counsels ; you 
make of him a friend, whose visits are long and 
often repeated. 

Frank only lingers for a while ; and you bid him 
again — adieu. It seems to you that it may well be 
the last ; and your blessing trembles on your lij). 
Yet you look not with dread, but rather with a firm 
trustfulness toward the day of the end. For your 
darling Madge, it is true, you have anxieties ; you 
fear to leave her lonely in the world with no protec- 
tor save the wayward Frank. 

* * * * * * 

It is later August when you call to Madge one day 
to bring you the little portfolio, in which are your 
cherished papers ; among them is your last will and 
testament. Thornton has just left you, and it seems 
to you that his repeated kindnesses are deserving of 
some substantial mark of your regard. 

"Maggie," you say, "Mr. Thornton has been very 
kind to me." 

"Very kind, father." 

"I mean to leave him here some little legacy, 
Maggie." 

"I would not, father." 

" But Madge, my daughter ! " 

"He is not looking for such return, father." 

" But he has been very kind, Madge ; I must show 



278 DREAM-LIFE. 

him some strong token of my regard. "What shall 
it be, Maggie ? " 

Madge hesitates, — Madge blushes, — Madge 
stoops to her father's ear as if the very walls might 
catch the secret of her heart ; — " Would you give me 
to him, father ? " 

" But — my dear Madge — has he asked this ? " 

" Eight months ago, papa." 

" And you told him " — 

" That I would never leave you, so long as you 
lived!" 

" My own dear Madge, — come to me, — kiss 

me. And you love him, Maggie?" 

" With all my heart, sir." 

'* So like your mother, — the same figure, — 

the same true, honest heart. It shall be as you wish, 
dear Madge. Only — you will not leave me in my 
old age, — eh, Maggie ?" 

"Never, father, — never." 

And there she leans upon his chair ; — her 



arm around the old man's neck, — her other hand 
clasped in his, — and her eyes melting with tender- 
ness as she gazes upon his aged face, — radiant with 
joy and with hope. 



IV. 

The End of Dreams, 

A FEEBLE old man, and a young lady who is 
just now blooming into the maturity of wom- 
anhood, are toiling up a gentle slope, where the 
Spring sun lies warmly. The old man totters, 
though he leans heavily upon his cane ; and he 
pants as he seats himseK upon a mossy rock that 
crowns the summit of the slope. As he recovers 
breath, he draws the hand of the lady in his, and 
with a trembhng eagerness he points out an old 
mansion that lies below under the shadow of tall 
sycamores ; and he says, — feebly and brokenly, — 
" That is it, Maggie, — the old home — the syca- 
mores — the garret — Charlie — Nelly " — 

The old man wipes his eyes. Then his hand 
shifts : he seems groping in darkness ; but soon it 



28o DREAM-LIFE. 

points toward a little cottage below, heavily over- 
shadowed. 

" That was it, Maggie ; — Madge lived there ■— 
sweet Madge — your mother " — 

Again the old man wipes his eyes, and the lady 
turns away. 

Presently they walk down the hill together. They 
cross a little valley with slow, faltering steps. The 
lady guides him carefully, until they reach a little 
graveyard. 

" This must be it, Maggie, but the fence is new. 
There it is, Maggie, under the willow, — my poor 
mother's grave ! " 

The lady weeps. 

*' Thank you, Madge ; you did not know her, but 
you weep for me. God bless you ! " 

Ht Ht Ht % Hi * 

The old man is in the midst of his household. It 
is some festive day. He holds feebly his place at 
the head of the board. He utters in low, tremulous 
tones — a Thanksgiving. 

His married Nelly is there with two blooming 
children. Frank is there with his bride. Madge — 
dearest of all — is seated beside the old man, watch- 
ful of his comfort, and assisting him as with a 
shadowy dignity he essays to do the honors of the 



THE END OF DREAMS. 281 

board. Tlie children prattle merrily : the elder ones 
talk of the days gone by ; and the old man enters 
feebly, yet with floating glimpses of glee, into the 
cheer and the rejoicings. 

Ht Ht Hi % Hi H: 

The same old man is in his chamber : he cannot 
leave his chair now. Madge is beside him ; Nelly 
is there too with her eldest-bom. Madge has been 
reading to the old man : it was a passage of prom- 
ise — of the Bible promise. 

" A glorious promise ! " says the old man, feebly ; 
— "a promise to me, — a promise to her, poor 
Madge ! " 

" Is her picture there, Maggie ? " 

Madge brings it to him : he turns his head ; but 
the light is not strong. They wheel his chair to the 
window. The sun is shining brightly : still the old 
man cannot see. 

"It is getting dark, Maggie." 

Madge looks at Nelly — wistfully — sadly. 

The old man murmurs something; and Madge 
stoops. — " Coming, " he says, — " coming ! " 

Nelly brings the Httle child to take his hand. 
Perhaps it will revive him. She hfts her boy to 
kiss his cheek. 

The old man does not stir : his eyes do not move : 



282 DREAM-LIFE. 

they seem fixed above. The child cries as his lips 
touch the cold cheek. — It is a tender Spring flower 
upon the bosom of the dying Winter. 



THE END. 



3l<-77-9 



